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ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



ARMENIA AND 
THE WAR 

AN ARMENIAN'S POINT OF VIEW 
WITH AN APPEAL TO BRITAIN AND 
THE COMING PEACE CONFERENCE 



BY 

A. P. HACOBIAN 

WITH A PREFACE BY THE RT. HON. 

VISCOUNT BRYCE, O.M. 



HODDER AND STOUGHTON 

LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO 
MCMXVII 



*' They are slaves who fear to speak 

For the fallen and the weak : 

They are slaves who will not choose 

Hatred, scoffing and abuse, 

Rather than in silence shrink 

From the truth they needs must think : 

They are slaves who dare not be 

In the right with two or three," 

Lowell, 



To serve Armenia is to serve civilization.^^ 

W. E. GLADSTONE. 



" We have put our money on the wrong 

horse. 

THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY. 



" . . . a Government incurably harharous 

and corrupt.'^ 

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. 



*' . . . the Ottoman Empire . . . decidedly 
foreign to Western civilization." 

ALLIES' NOTE TO PRESIDENT WILSON, 
January 11, 1917. 

^ After the massacres of 1895-1896, Lord Salisbury, 
who had himself taken a prominent part in the con- 
summation of the Treaty of Berlin and the Cyprus 
Convention, frankly admitted the failure of the policy 
which gave birth to these treaties, and the futility of 
relying upon Turkish promises. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

The end of the war will leave Great 
Britain and her Allies the practical arbiters 
of the destinies of Europe and the Near 
East. The predominant part played in the 
prosecution of the war by Great Britain 
and the British Empire will entitle them 
to an equally decisive voice in the councils 
of the Peace Conference. That proud 
position carries with it a supreme privilege 
as well as a heavy moral responsibility. 
That the voice and weight of Britain and 
Greater Britain will be cast, on all occasions, 
on the side of justice and liberty, there 
cannot be the slightest doubt. But however 
just and fair-minded a judge may be, it is 
impossible for him to dispense justice without 
hearing all sides of the case before him. 

That is my plea for placing this statement 
of the cause of my afflicted country before 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

the British pubUc, confident that, with its 
inherent love of fair play, it will give my 
pleading a fair hearing. 1^ 

I am anxious to make one point clear. 
I hold no authority and claim no right 
whatever to speak for the nation or any 
national or local organization of any kind. 
The views set forth in this little volume 
are the views of an individual Armenian 
who feels, as do no doubt all his compatriots, 
that the Armenian blood that has flowed 
so freely in this war, imposes upon every 
living Armenian the sacred duty of employ- 
ing all legitimate means in his power to 
secure to the survivors the justice and 
reparation to which their numerous fallen 
relatives have given them an overwhelming 
and indisputable title. They are my views, 
and the responsibility for them rests on 
myself and myself alone. 

I have stated my views frankly. One 
or two of my friends were kind enough to 
express the opinion that that might injure 
our cause. While I appreciate their interest 
and solicitude, I do not share their fears. 
I am convinced that the truth can never 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE ix 

be unpopular with the British public or 
prejudice a good cause. 

I have, of necessity, had to quote freely 
from many sources, and I take this oppor- 
tunity to express my apologies and indebted- 
ness to the authorities quoted, in particular 
to Lord Bryce and Mr. Arnold J. Toynbee 
for very kindly permitting me to quote 
extracts from the Blue Book. 



A. P. Hacobian. 



London, 

February, 1917. 



PREFACE 

Of all the peoples upon whom this war has 
brought calamity and suffering, the Armenian 
people have had the most to endure. Great 
as has been the misery inflicted by the inva- 
ders upon the non-combatant populations 
of Belgium and Northern France, upon Poland, 
upon Serbia, the misery of Armenia, though far 
less known to the outer world, has been far 
more terrible. 

When the European War broke out, in 
1914, the Government of the Turkish Empire 
had fallen into the hands of a small gang 
of unscrupulous ruffians calling themselves 
the Committee of Union and Progress, who 
were ruling through their command of the 
army, but in the name of the harmless and 
imbecile Sultan. By means which have not 
been fully disclosed, but the nature of which 
can be easily conjectured, this gang were won 



XI 



xii PREFACE 

over to serve the interests of Germany; and 
at Germany's bidding they declared war against 
the Western AUies, thus dragging all the sub- 
jects of Turkey, Muslim and Christian, into 
a conflict with which they had no concern. 
The Armenian Christians scattered through 
the Asiatic part of the Turkish dominions, 
having had melancholy experience in the Adana 
massacres some years previously of what 
cruelties the ruling gang were capable of 
perpetrating, were careful to remain quiet, 
and to furnish no pretext to the Turkish 
authorities for an attack upon them. But 
the rulers of Turkey showed that they did 
not need a pretext for the execution of the 
nefarious purposes they cherished. They had 
formed a design for the extermination of the 
non-Mohammedan elements in the population 
of Asiatic Turkey, in order to make what they 
called a homogeneous nation, consisting of 
Mohammedans only. The wickedness of such 
a design was equalled only by its blind folly, 
for the Christian Armenians of Asia Minor 
and the north-eastern provinces constituted 
the most industrious, the most intelligent, and 
the best-educated part of the population. 



PREFACE xiii 

Most of the traders and merchants, nearly 
all the skilled artisans, were Armenians, and 
to destroy them was to destroy the chief 
industrial asset which these regions possessed. 
However, this was the plan of the Committee 
of Union and Progress, and as soon as they 
began to feel, in the spring of 1915, ^ that the 
Allied expedition against the Dardanelles was 
not likely to succeed, they proceeded to exe- 
cute it. They first disarmed all the Arme- 
nians in order to have them at their mercy; 
and in some cases, in order to make it appear 
that the Armenians were intending to take 
up arms, they actually sent weapons into the 
towns and then had them seized as evidence 
against the Christians. When such arms as the 
Christians possessed had been secured, orders 
for massacre were issued from Constantinople 
to the local governors. The whole Armenian 
population was seized. The grown men were 
slaughtered without m^ercy. The younger 
women were sold in the market place to the 
highest bidder, or appropriated by Turkish 
military officers and civil officials to become 
slaves in Turkish harems. The boys were 
handed over to dervishes to be carried off 



l^ 



xiv PREFACE 

and brought up as Muslims. The rest of the 
hapless victims, all the older men and women, 
the mothers and their babes clinging to them, 
were torn from their homes and driven out 
along the tracks which led into the desert 
region of northern Syria and Arabia. Most 
of them perished on the way from hardships, 
from disease, from starvation. A few were 
still surviving some months ago near Aleppo 
and along the banks of the Euphrates. Many, 
probably thousands, were drowned in that 
river and its tributaries, martyrs to their 
Christian faith, which they had refused to 
renounce; for it was generally possible for 
women, and sometimes for men, to save them- 
selves by accepting Mohammedanism. By 
these various methods hundreds of thousands — 
the number is variously estimated at from 
500,000 to 800,000— have perished. And all 
this was done with the tacit acquiescence of 
the German Government, some of whose repre- 
sentatives on the spot are even said to have 
encouraged the Turks in their work of slaughter, 
while the Government confined its action to 
propagating in Germany, so as to deceive its 
own people, false stories wliich alleged that 



PREFACE XV 

the Armenians had been punished for insur- 
rectionary movements. 

All these facts, with many details too 
horrible to be repeated here, are set forth in 
the Blue Book recently published in England, 
containing accounts based upon incontro- 
vertible evidence, and to which no reply has 
been made, though some denials, palpably false, 
have emanated from the Turkish gang, and 
some others from the German Government. 

The victims who have thus been put to death, 
a large part of the whole Armenian people, 
belong to what is one of the oldest nations in 
the world, which has been Christian and 
civilized ever since the third century of 
our era. If any people ever deserved the 
sympathy of the civilized world, it is they 
who have clung to their faith and the tradi- 
tions of their ancient kingdom ever since 
that kingdom was overthrown by the Turkish 
invaders many centuries ago. They now ap- 
peal to the Allied Nations who are fighting 
the battle of Right and Himianity against the 
German Government and its barbarous Turkish 
allies, asking that when the end of the war 
comes their case may be considered and they 



xvi PREFACE 

may be for ever delivered from the Turkish 
yoke. Nowhere is their hard ease better 
known than in the United States, for it is 
the American missionaries who have, by their 
admirable schools and colleges planted in 
many cities of Asiatic Turkey, done more for 
them than any other country has done, giving 
them light, consolation and sympathy. 

The author of this little book is an Armenian 
gentleman belonging to a family orginally 
from Ispahan in Persia, but now settled in 
England. He speaks with intimate knowledge 
as well as with patriotic feeling, and states 
the case of his countrymen with a moderation 
well fitted to inspire confidence. Upon the 
argimients he puts forward I do not venture 
to express any opinion in detail. But those 
who know something of Asiatic Turkey will 
recognize with him that the Armenians are, by 
their intelligence and their irrepressible energy, 
the race best fitted to restore prosperity to 
regions desolated by Turkish oppression. The 
educated Armenians, notwithstanding all they 
have suffered, are abreast of the modern world 
of civilization. Among them are many men 



PREFACE xvii 

of science and learning, as well as artists and 
poets. They are scattered in many lands. I 
have visited large Armenian colonies as far 
west as California, and there are others as far 
east as Rangoon. Many of the exiles would 
return to their ancient home if they could but 
be guaranteed that security and peace which 
they have never had, and can never have, under 
the rule of the Turk. May we not confidently 
hope that the Allied Powers will find means 
for giving it to them at the end of this war, 
for extending to them that security which 
they have long desired and are capable of 
using well? 

Bryce. 

May, 1917. 



CONTENTS 



ARMENIA AS A WAE ISSUE— GREATEST SUFFERER 
FROM TURKO-PRUSSIAN " FR 
EFFECT ON AMERICAN OPINION 



FROM TURKO-PRUSSIAN " FRIGHTFULNESS " — 



II. ARMENIA AND REPARATION — ARMENIA S MARTYR- 
DOM — CONDEMNATION AND DEMAND FOR REPAR- 
ATION INADEQUATELY EXPRESSED ... 10 

III. "the GENTLE AND CLEAN-FIGHTING TURK" . 22 

rV. ANGLO-RUSSIAN FRIENDSHIP A VITAL NECESSITY 
FOR PEACE AND PROGRESS IN ASIA — MOSLEMS 
AND TURKISH RULE— ARMENIANS PROGRESSIVE 
AND DEMOCRATIC BY TEMPERAMENT . . 40 

V. ARMENIA AS A PEACE PROBLEM — VIEWS OF THE 



(( 



MANCHESTER GUARDIAN" AND THE "SPEC- 



TATOR "—CAN ARMENIANS STAND ALONE AMONG 
THE KURDS? — AMERICAN OPINION AND THE 
FUTURE OF ARMENIA . . . . .50 

VI. ARMENIA'S SERVICES IN THE WAR ... 66 

VIL ARMENIA THE BATTLE-GROUND OP ASIA MINOR 

AND VICTIM OF CONTENDING EMPIRES . .81 

VIIL THE BLUE-BOOK — THE EPIC OF ARMENIA'S MAR- 
TYRDOM, THE REVELATION OF HER SPIRIT AND 
CHARACTER—" TRUTH " ON THE ARMENIANS : 

A DIGRESSION 94 

xix 



XX CONTENTS 



FAGB 



IX. EXTRACTS FROM THE BLUE BOOK . . .114 
X. GREAT BRITAIN AND ARMENIA— THE LATE DUKE 

OF Argyll's views— an appeal to Britain . 140 

XI. AN APPEAL TO THE COMING PEACE CONFERENCE . 160 



POSTSCRIPT 181 

APPENDIX . . 189 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



ARMENIA AS A WAR ISSUE— GREATEST SUF- 
FERER FROM TURKO-PRUSSIAN " FRIGHTFUL- 
NESS "—EFFECT ON AMERICAN OPINION 

The first official advance for peace made 
by Germany and her Allies, although 
couched in defiant and menacing terms, was 
nevertheless an unmistakable signal of dis- 
tress, and has brought the world within 
measurable distance of that just and durable 
peace which the Allies have set out to achieve. 
The prospect of approaching peace has set 
on foot a general reiteration of the issues 
at stake, and consideration of the terms 
and problems of peace. Public attention in 
this country will naturally be occupied, in 
the first place, with the momentous issues 
and interests of the United Kingdom, the 

B 



2 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

British Empire and her Alhes raised by 
the war and to be settled and secured by 
the impending peace. It will therefore, I 
hope, not be considered amiss or premature 
for a member of one of those small and 
oppressed peoples engulfed in the vortex of 
the war who look to Great Britain and her 
Allies for deliverance, reparation and the 
security of their future liberty, to put 
before the British public his views, as well 
as facts and arguments that may be of 
some service in enabling it to form a just 
estimate of the claims and merits of one of 
the smaller problems which run the risk of 
not receiving a full hearing at the Peace 
Conference, in the presence of a multitude 
of larger and more important questions. 

The item in the Allied peace terms stated 
in their reply to President Wilson's note, 
" the setting free of the populations subject 
to the bloody tyranny of the Turks," is the 
bearer to Armenians of a message of com- 
fort and hope. It heralds the dawn of a 
new day that will mark the end of the long 
and hideous nightmare of Turkish tyranny. 

If President Wilson, the American people, 



ARMENIA AMD THE WAR S 

or other neutrals were in search of evidence 
that would prove to them conclusively 
which of the two groups of belligerents is 
sincere in its professions of regard for " the 
rights and privileges of weak peoples and 
small states " ; if Belgium had not been 
violated and ravaged; if the Lusitania and 
so many hospital ships, liners and merchant- 
men had not been sunk without any care as 
to the fate of the wounded, the children and 
women, the non-combatant men and crews; 
if Zeppelins had not spread death and 
destruction among women and children in 
their homes in the night; if all these and 
so many other outrages had not been com- 
mitted, and there had been, in the whole 
course of the war, no other act of the 
Quadruple Alliance in any degree contrary 
to the laws and usages of civilized warfare 
and dictates of humanity, the single word 
Armenia would provide that proof — a 
crushing, monumental proof— as to who is 
and who is not sincere in the professions 
of regard for right, justice and humanity. 
The spirit of desolated Armenia stands at 
the head of the phantom spirits of out- 



4 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

raged humanity, which must rise and shatter 
to atoms every mask of benevolence, righ- 
teousness and injured innocence that the 
protagonists of " f rightfulness " may assume 
for the deception of their own peoples and 
neutrals. 

But in the United States at least there 
is no need for any fresh proof or explana- 
tion of the issue at this stage, and the 
martyrdom of Armenia has contributed 
largely to that state of American opinion. 
I have little doubt that President Wilson's 
Peace Note and speech to the Senate are 
the first steps towards America casting her 
whole weight into the scale, aiming at the 
realization of a just and lasting peace. 

The intense interest evinced by the people 
and Government of the United States in 
the fate of Armenia and the Armenians is 
abundantly shown not only by the generous 
gifts of money for the relief of the survivors 
and the noble personal services by devoted 
missionaries and relief agents, some of whom 
lost their lives in their work of mercy; but 
also by diplomatic action on behalf of the 
Armenians in Constantinople (where Mr. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 5 

Morgenthau, to his great honour, struggled 
vahantly to stay the hand of the ruthless 
oppressor), and by the prominence given to 
any and every scrap of news concerning 
the holocaust in Armenia. It is no exag- 
geration to say that, military operations 
apart, no incident of the war, not excepting 
the violation and martyrdom of Belgium, 
has been given more space and prominence 
in the American Press than anything con- 
nected with the martyrdom of Armenia and 
Syria and the relief of the refugees and 
exiles. 

In his reply to the Armenian deputation 
who on December 14, 1916, presented to 
him an illuminated parchment from the 
Catholicos expressing His Holiness's grati- 
tude and thanks to the American nation, 
President Wilson said, inter alia — 

" We have tried to do what was possible 
to save your people from the ravages of 
war. My great regret is, that we have been 
able to accomplish so little. There have 
been many suffering peoples as the result 
of that terrible struggle, and the lot of none 



6 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

has touched the American heart more than 
the suffering of the Armenians,''^ ^ 

Nothing in the war has brought home to , 
the people of the United States the moral! I 
issues of the war more strongly and vividly 
than the unprecedented barbarities com- 
mitted by the Turks in their diabolical 
attempt to wipe out the Armenian race. 
No event of the war has been more damaging 
to the Central Powers in the eyes of the 
United States. Here they have seen the 
ruthless spirit of the twin enemies of human- 
ity and liberty— the Turkish yatagan sup- 
ported by the Prussian jack-boot — in its 
hideous nakedness, at work in the depths 
of Asia, unrestrained and unperceived, as 
they thought, by the light of civilization. 

This gospel of the jack-boot and the 
yatagan will be best illustrated by putting 
side by side two quotations, one from the 
Tanine, the official organ of the Committee 
of Union and Progress in Constantinople, 
and the other from a statement made by 

1 Quoted in The New Armenia of New York, 
January 1, 1917. The italics are mine. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 7 

Count Reventlow in October 1915. The 
Tanine " invited the Government to ex- 
terminate or forcibly convert to Islam all 
Armenian women in Turkey as the only 
means of saving the Ottoman Empire." ^ 
Count Reventlow, the high priest of the 
gospel of Brute Force and Militarism, writing 
in the Tageszeitung in defence and approval 
of Turkey's appalling crime, said that it was 
the Ottoman Government's obvious right 
and duty to take the strongest repressive 
measures against '*the bloodthirsty Arme- 
nians " — ^the measures advocated by the 
Tanine, which were carried out by Count 
Reventlow' s worthy allies on the Bosphorus 
with a completeness and ferocity that must 
have greatly pleased him. 

The German Government and German 
apologists have made a great parade of the 
use of Indian and African troops in Europe 
by the Allies. By all reports, these troops 
have fought as clean a fight as any troops 
in the war. I think that in the judgment 
of future historians no incident of this war, 

^ Quoted in Guerre Sociale (Paris), September 16, 
1915. 



8 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

whose history is so heavily shadowed on 
one side with outrages and violations of 
the laws of civilized warfare, will meet with 
so strong a condemnation as Germany's 
alliance with the Young Turks, the declara- 
tion of a " holy war " at her behest, and 
its dire consequences for the already sorely 
tried Christian subjects of the Turks. (It 
should be remembered that Germany and 
Austria are signatories to the Treaty of 
Berlin, Art. 61 of which was to have brought 
about " the improvements and reforms de- 
manded by local requirements in the pro- 
vinces inhabited by the Armenians," and 
to have " guaranteed their security against 
the Kurds and Circassians." This point 
cannot be too strongly emphasized.) She 
could have foreseen these consequences; 
and if she did not foresee them, she could 
have stopped them when they made them- 
selves apparent. Turkey's entry into the 
war placed her Christian subjects in a 
position of great peril, as it has been her 
custom to wreak upon them her vengeance 
for defeats; while a state of war freed her 
from the moral restraint of Europe. It 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 9 

was hoped that German and Austrian in- 
fluence would check this tendency. How 
cruelly events have shattered that hope ! 
They have proved that it was too much to 
expect humanity and the ordinary feelings 
of chivalry and compassion for the honour 
and suffering of women and children from 
the State policies of these great Christian 
Governments and the majority of their 
agents in Turkey. I do not believe that 
this ungodly and inhuman policy has re- 
ceived general approbation either in Ger- 
many or Austria-Hungary. This is evident 
from the quotations from German missionary 
journals in the Blue-book on the " Treatment 
of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire." ^ It 
is also proved by the protests addressed to 
the Imperial Chancellor by several Catholic 
and Protestant organizations. 

^ The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. 
Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon, 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with a preface 
by Viscount Bryce (Hodder & Stoughton). 



II 

ARMENIA AND REPARATION — ARMENIA'S 
MARTYRDOM — CONDEMNATION AND DE- 
MAND FOR REPARATION INADEQUATELY 
EXPRESSED 

The Governments of the Allies have unani- 
mously declared that peace is only possible 
on the principles of adequate reparation for 
the past, adequate security for the future, and 
recognition of the principle of nationalities 
and of the free existence of small states. 

" Reparation " means no doubt in the 
first place reparation for the wanton and 
ruthless destruction of unoffending and 
defenceless civilian lives and property. 

It is characteristic of the British sense of 
justice and fair play that Belgium, France 
and Serbia should be given the first place 
in their demand for reparation, for, of 
course, there are the British victims of 

f rightfulness," Zeppelin and submarine vic- 

10 



(( 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 11 

tims and the victims of judicial murders to 
be atoned for and recompensed. 

This unanimous demand for reparation 
to the smaller nations for all they have 
suffered as a result of the brutal and un- 
scrupulous aggression of their more power- 
ful neighbours, and their security and free 
development, augurs well for the future. 
It is an earnest given by the Entente 
Powers to the world, of the sincerity of 
their declarations regarding the unselfish, 
just and worthy objects which they entered 
the war to attain. 

I must be excused, however, if I confess 
to feeling not a little perplexity at the fact 
that, in discussing the peace terms, the 
great organs of British public opinion, with 
some notable exceptions,^ have made little 

^ Armenians are especially indebted to the Manchester 
Guardian and The Times for their valuable services to 
their cause, humanity and truth in exposing the reign 
of terror in Armenia and the Turk's affectation of 
" clean-fighting." Part 101 of The Times History and 
Encyclopcedia of the War was the first detailed account 
of what had happened in Armenia since the outbreak 
of war, and I may add that, considering the difficulties 
of obtaining information, it is a remarkably well- 
informed account. 



12 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

or no reference to Armenia in the demand 

for penalties, reparation and redemption. 

This fact must have impressed Mr. Arthur 

Henderson, who, in his reference to Armenia 

quoted more fully elsewhere, remarked that 

". . . Armenian atrocities were not much 

talked about here . . . etc." My anxiety 

will be understood when I point out that 

for us it is not a question of a little more 

or less territory, a little larger or smaller 

indemnity. For us more than for any other 

race involved in the war it is a question of 

"to be or not to be " in a real and fateful 

sense : the rebirth of Armenian nationality 

from the profusion of its lost blood and 

heaps of smouldering ashes, or the end of 

that long-cherished and bled-for aspiration, 

and the consummation of the " poHcy " of 

Abdul Hamid and the Young Turks. 

The first general discussion of the terms 
of peace has coincided with the publication, 
as a Blue-book, of Lord Bryce's comprehen- 
sive documentary evidence on the attempt 
of the Turks to murder the Armenian nation 
in cold blood. I gratefully acknowledge 
the fact that many newspapers wrote sym- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 13 

pathetic editorial articles or reviews on the 
Blue-book, emphasizing, with incontestable 
force, that this conclusive evidence of the 
abominable crimes committed by the Turks 
in Armenia without any protest from official 
Germany, is a crushing reply to the German 
Chancellor's protestations of solicitude for 
humanity. 

But, opportune as has been the immediate 
effect of this fresh evidence of Lord Bryce's 
noble and untiring labours in the cause of 
humanity, as a tragic and terrible exposure 
of the irony of the Central Powers' profes- 
sions of pity for suffering humanity, that is 
surely not the only or the principal moral to 
be drawn from these haunting pages. They 
constitute a terrible and lasting reproach to 
the European diplomacy of our time. They 
unfold to the horrified gaze of mankind a 
vast column of human smoke and human 
anguish rising to the heavens as the incense 
of the most fearful yet most glorious mass- 
martyrdom the world has ever seen, but 
casting a shadow of lasting shame upon 
Christendom and civilization. The unparal- 
leled outburst of barbarity they reveal did 



14 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

not come as a surprise. Europe had heard 
its premonitory rumbhngs these last forty 
years. As far back as 1880 the repre- 
sentatives of the Great Powers in their 
famous and futile Identic Note to the 
Sublime Porte, said : " So desperate was 
the misgovernment of the country that it 
would lead in all probability to the de- 
struction of the Christian population of 
vast districts." The massacres of 1895-1896 
and 1909 cost the lives of 250,000 to 300,000 
Armenians. But most of the European 
statesmen of the day persistently refused to 
believe that " the gentle Turk " was capable 
of such bursts of unspeakable barbarism; 
while Bismarck declared openly that the 
whole Eastern Question was not worth 
" the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier." 
His successors have followed and improved 
upon his ruthless, unchristian policy, and 
Europe sees the result. 

With due respect to the small minority 
of humane Turks, who, I dare say, are 
themselves shocked at what their rulers, 
their soldiery and populace have proved 
themselves capable of, the Turk as a race 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 15 

has added yet another and vaster monu- 
ment than ever before to the long series of 
similar monuments that fill the pages of 
his blood-stained history, in proof of the 
unchangeable brutality of his nature. You 
cannot reason or argue with him. Nor can 
you expect justice or ordinary human feel- 
ings from such a nature. The only sane 
and honest way to deal with him is to 
make him innocuous. It is official Europe 
that is to blame for leaving him so long at 
large and his prey at his mercy. It is 
European diplomacy of the past forty years 
that is responsible for looking on while the 
relentless mutilation was going on limb by 
limbj until Moloch saw his chance in the war 
and all but devoured his hapless victim, with 
the tacit acquiescence of the Governments of 
two great Christian empires, and the applause 
of Count Reventlow and his disciples. 

How is it to be explained that this de- 
liberately planned destruction of more than 
half a million human beings by all the 
tortures of the Dark Ages, and the deporta- 
tion and enslavement worse than death of 
more than half a million, have not aroused 



16 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the righteous wrath of the great British 
writers and thinkers of the day to nearly 
the same extent as the martyrdom of 
Belgium ? How is it that great writers and 
poets have not felt the call of expressing to 
the world in the language of genius the 
stupefying horror as well as the moral 
grandeur of this vast, unparalleled tragedy ? ^ 
Great Britain has always been, and is to-day 
more than ever, the champion and " the 
hope of the oppressed and the despair of 
the oppressor." That sympathy, horror and 
indignation exist in this country in the 
fullest measure there is not the slightest 
doubt. One sees proofs and indications of 
their existence at every turn. But why, 
in Heaven's name, is it not proclaimed to 

^ Mr. Israel Zangwill concludes a moving and elo- 
quent tribute to the agony of Armenia in The New 
Armenia (New York) of March 1, 1917, entitled "The 
Majesty of Armenia," in the following words — " I bow 
before this higher majesty of sorrow. I take the crown 
of thorns from Israel's head and I place it upon 
Armenia's." 

Is it not a strange fact that of all contemporary 
authors and publicists of note, it should have fallen to 
a famous and gifted Jew to pay the first tribute to 
"the majesty" of Armenia's martyrdom for the 
Christian faith ? 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 17 

the world that the culprits may know and 
tremble and stay their hand ? Bishops have 
been burnt to death, hundreds of churches 
desecrated, and ministers of Christ tortured 
and murdered; hundreds of thousands of 
Christian women and children done to death 
in circumstances of unspeakable barbarity 
and bestiality. Why are the Churches of 
Great Britain and all Christendom not raising 
a cry of indignation that will reverberate 
throughout the world and strike the fear 
of God into the hearts of these assassins 
and all powers of darkness ? Why is not a 
word said as a tribute, so richly deserved, 
to the heroic and indomitable spirit of the 
men and women and even children who 
chose torture and death rather than deny 
their Christ, sacrifice their honour or re- 
nounce their nationality ? ^ Here is assuredly 

^ Mr. P. W. Wilson's sympathetic and appreciative 
articles in The Westminster Gazette and The Daily 
News and Leader of February 3, 1917, appeared after 
the above was written. While I am most grateful to 
Mr. Wilson and the two great organs of British public 
opinion, I avail myself of this opportunity to make 
one or two observations on some of the points Mr. 
Wilson has raised — 

'' The first impulse of the refugee " has not only 
c 



18 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the most inspiring example of all times of 
the triumph of the spirit of Christ and the 
fidelity in death to conscience, personal 

been " to start a shop " but also to start a school 
and improvise the means of continuing the publica- 
tion of the newspaper he was publishing in Van before 
the exile, as the Belgians have done here under more 
favourable circumstances. The toleration practised 
by Armenians and their Church is not due to ad- 
versity, but the true understanding of Christianity. 
The spirit of toleration breathes through the pages 
of the history of the Armenian Church from the earliest 
times. 

Mr. Wilson says : " It is doubtless regrettable that 
the Armenians should have failed to recommend their 
progressive conception of life to the Moslems around 
them." This is a striking example of the miscon- 
ception that so often exists in the minds of even the 
most sympathetic observers of Armenian affairs. Mr. 
Wilson knows no doubt for how much prestige counts 
in the East. If the European missions with all the 
prestige of their great nations, governments, em- 
bassies, consulates, etc., behind them (to say nothing 
of the unlimited funds at their disposal) have had such 
little success in Moslem countries, is it reasonable 
to blame the Armenians, oppressed, harried, tortured, 
massacred, plunged into the depths of misery, for not 
having fared better? What respect could the Arme- 
nian's religion inspire among his Moslem neighbours 
who murdered his bishops and priests, desecrated his 
churches and inflicted the most revolting insults upon 
the outward symbols of his faith, while his powerful 
co-religionists stood by and did nothing ? Under these 
circumstances what better service could the Armenian 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 19 

honour and independence, over savage fury 
and brutal lust at the highest pitch ever 
attained in them by fiends in human form; 
a triumph and an example more inspiring, 
and with a deeper and more lasting sig- 
nificance for humanity and Christianity, 
perhaps, than this great and terrible war 
itself; and the Churches and spokesmen 
and writers of great Christian countries, 
belligerent and neutral, pass over that 
aspect of the Great Tragedy almost in 
complete silence ! 

I do not ask tributes for the martyrs; 
let their praise be sung by the hosts of 
heaven. Nor is this a complaint; and it 
would be a presumption on my part to 
assume the role of critic or mentor to 
leaders of religion, thought and learning in 
great Christian countries. It is far indeed 
from my intention to assume such a role. 
But these are facts which I contemplate 
with inexpressible sorrow, almost despair — 
facts which perplex and puzzle me and 
which surpass my understanding. Perhaps 

render his religion than die for it? In happier days, 
the early Armenian Christians were largely instrumental 
in converting the Georgians. 



20 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



1 



my judgment is dimmed and embittered by 
my nation's sufferings. If that is so, is any 
one surprised that the Armenian soul should 
be bitter to-day, bitter with a bitterness, 
anguish and indignation such as the soul of 
man has never tasted before, or any people 
can possibly imagine ? 

Some papers speak of the sufferings of 
the Armenians being equal to those of the 
Belgians. 

Armenians know, if any one does, what 

bondage and suffering under the tyrant's 

heel mean, and they yield to none in their 

profound sympathy and admiration for 

heroic Belgium, Serbia and the occupied 

parts of France. The martyrdom of 5000 

unoffending Belgian civilians is a horrible 

enough episode, but surely there is some 

difference between 5000 and 600,000 victims, 

to say nothing of the 600,000 who were 

enslaved, forcibly converted to Islam, and 

driven in caravans of torture and death to 

the Mesopotamian deserts. ^ What is the 

^ It is some consolation to know, as some reports say, 
that the Arabs have treated these unfortunates kindly. 
It is an indication of — and a credit to — their superior 
civilization. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 21 

condition of these unfortunates, and how 
many have survived, must remain a dread 
secret of the desert until the end of the 
war. 

Is it because the victims are Armenians, 
mere Armenians so used to massacre, so 
long abandoned by Europe to the lust and 
pleasure of " the Gentle Turk " ? That may 
be so in the eyes of men. But there is God, 
and in His eyes the life and pain and tor- 
ture and death of an Armenian child, woman, 
or man are the same, exactly the same, as 
those of any other child, woman, or man 
without exception. 



cc 



III 

THE GENTLE AND CLEAN-FIGHTING TURK " ^ 



The Allies have declared in their reply to 
President Wilson that one of their aims is 
" the turning out of Europe of the Ottoman 

^ Since this chapter was written, the following 
authoritative and important piece of evidence on 
this much-debated subject has appeared in The Weekly 
Dispatch of March 4, 1917, from the pen of General 
Sir O'Moore Creagh, V.C— 

"... I have experience of the Turk. He is a 
merciless oppressor, whose real character is often 
hidden behind a pleasant manner, and who is ready 
to cut your throat with a sort of savage courtesy. 
Appeal to his fanaticism, and in the trenches he has 
no fear of death; but he is very subject, in case of 
reverse, to cowardly panic, which to a considerable 
extent detracts from his worth as a soldier. . . . 

" I know some of our men who have met the Turk 
both on the Tigris and in Gallipoli speak of him as a 
clean fighter. Certainly when he meets his match he 
fights fairly enough, but when he is an easy victor 
he is remorseless and merciless; and robs, murders, 
and ravishes with the unrestrained savagery which 
lies at the base of his character. The British prisoners 
taken by the Turk in the present war have been dis- 

22 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 2B 

Empire, as decidedly foreign to Western 
civilization,^^ 

This fact of the Turk being " decidedly 
foreign to Western civiHzation," affirmed on 
the authority and conviction of the Govern- 
ments of four of the greatest and most 
advanced nations of Europe, needs no fur- 
ther proof. Nevertheless it seems desirable, 
in the interests of truth, to endeavour to 
dissipate the misconception that has been 
created by the extraordinary myth of " the 
clean-fighting Turk." 

There has been a disposition in this 
country, natural and intelligible under the 
circumstances, to attribute the recent (let 
us hope the last) and most terrible of the 
Armenian massacres wholly or largely to 
German influence. That the German Govern- 
ment had it in its power to stop this gigantic 
crime if it had so wished, there is no doubt. 
It seems likely also that the Turk applied 

gracefully treated, and, as we know, denied clothing, 
medicine, and the ordinary necessaries of life, starved, 
and even refused shelter in extremes of heat and cold. 
The people who are always ready to praise the Turk 
as a clean fighter should remember that he has a lot 
to answer for in the present war." 



24 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

to his brutal scheme the method and 
thoroughness he had learned from his Ger- 
man ally. But seriously to assert, as some 
writers and speakers have done, that Ger- 
man influence instigated the massacres, is 
to shut one's eyes to the Turk's record ever 
since he became known to history. One need 
only turn the pages of his history— a verit- 
able chamber of horrors— to convince oneself 
that massacre, outrage, and devastation have 
always been congenial to the Turk. 

Without for a moment wishing to absolve 
the German Government of its responsibihty, 
before God and humanity, for not exerting 
its influence to save more than a million ab- 
solutely innocent human beings from death, 
slow torture, and slavery: the fact, never- 
theless, remains that Hulagu, Sultan SeHm, 
Bayazid and Abdul Hamid were not under 
German influence, that there were no Ger- 
mans at the sack of Constantinople or the 
massacres of Bagdad and Sivas, or, in more 
recent times, at the butcheries of Chios, 
Greece, Crete, Batak, Macedonia, Sassoon,' 
Urfa, or Adana. The Turk, in fact, has 
nothing to learn from his Teutonic ally in 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 25 

" f rightfulness " ; he has a great deal to teach 
him. I readily admit that there are some 
Turks who are gentle and good men. Some of 
these have risked good positions and even 
their lives to protect Armenian women and 
children. But most unfortunately for us, 
for humanity and for the Turks themselves, 
such good Turks are few and far between. 

It is true that orders for the extirpation 
of the Armenians were issued from Con- 
stantinople, but can any one imagine such 
revolting orders being carried out by " gentle 
and clean-fighting " troops and people ? I 
shall be much surprised if any unprejudiced 
man or woman in any civilized country 
believes that any but the Turkish populace 
and soldiery would be capable of carrying 
out such orders. History at any rate has 
given us no such evidence. 

I believe that, under a just and honest 
government and better influences, the 
Turkish peasant will, in course of time, lose 
his proneness to cruelty, for he has good 
qualities. But if this war is intended to 
see the end of tyranny, oppression, brutal 
religious and political persecution and the 



26 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



1 



discontent and unrest that such conditions 
always produce; if it is to prevent the 
possibihty of a repetition of the hell that 
the Turks have let loose in Armenia since 
they entered the war and so often before the 
war ; then it is clear that never again must 
the Turk be allowed to possess the power 
over other races, which he has so abomin- 
ably abused ever since he " hacked his 
way through " to the fair, fertile and once 
highly prosperous country which he has 
devastated and converted into a charnel- 
house. 

The Armenians of Turkey had no separa- 
tist aspirations. They knew that was im- 
practicable. Nothing would have suited 
them better than a reformed government in 
Turkey, that would give them security of 
life, honour and property, the free develop- 
ment of their national and religious insti- 
tutions and an approach to equality with 
Moslems before the law. On the promulga- 
tion of the Constitution, all the Armenian 
revolutionary societies were transformed into 
peaceable and orderly political parties as 
by magic. They had great hopes of achiev- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 27 

ing these aims and the regeneration of the 
Ottoman Empire from within in co-operation 
with the Young Turks before the war, and 
they gave the Committee of Union and 
Progress (was there ever a more incongru- 
ous misnomer ?) all the support they could, 
which was by no means negligible ; but they 
had not long to wait to be completely and 
bitterly disillusioned. The Adana massacres 
gave their hopes the first blow. The Arme- 
nian leaders proved too earnest and sincere 
democrats for the Committee leaders who, 
with few exceptions, were actuated, as 
events proved, more by inordinate personal 
ambition than the " hberty " and " equality " 
which they so loudly proclaimed and which 
have proved such a hideous mockery. The 
chauvinistic wing soon gained complete 
ascendancy over the party, which resolved 
on the covert or forcible " Ottomanization " 
of all non-Turk races of the Empire (as is 
proved by the recent exposures of the Grand 
Sheriff of Mecca), and ended by joining 
the Germans in the war in the hope of 
conquering Egypt and the Caucasus. 

It is a mistake to think that Germany 



28 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

forced Turkey into the war against her will 
by the presence of the Goeben and Breslaii, 
Those who had any knowledge of Turkish 
affairs had no doubt of the existence of a 
military understanding between Germany 
and Turkey for some years before the war. 
The arrival of a military mission at Con- 
stantinople under Liman von Sanders left 
no doubt on that point. 

On the outbreak of the European war, 
the Armenian Dashnakist Party met in 
congress at Erzerum to determine the atti- 
tude to be observed by the Party in relation 
to the war. Hearing of this, the Young 
Turks forthwith sent representatives to ascer- 
tain the attitude of the Party in the event of 
Turkey going to war against Russia. (See 
Blue-book, p. 80.) This took place some 
weeks before the arrival of the Goeben and 
Breslau at Constantinople. Nor was the 
war as unpopular with the Turkish masses 
at the outset as is thought by many. If 
that were so there would have been a revolt 
against the Young Turks, and Turkey would 
have been detached from the Central Powers 
long ago. It may be less popular now, 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 29 

because their dreams of conquest have been 
shattered and the whole country is suffering. 
No Turk, Young or Old, had any particular 
objection to the prospects of the conquest 
either of Egypt or the Caucasus, and many 
of them aimed at a Moslem Triple Alliance 
between Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan under 
German auspices, and even dreamt dreams 
of an empire that would ultimately embrace 
India and the whole of Northern Africa ! ^ 

The Young Turks have tried their hand 
at the government of the Ottoman Empire, 
and have failed more completely and proved 
infinitely more cruel and brutal than the 
old Turks. Besides this, their betrayal of 
the Entente Powers and the vast and 
unprecedented crime which they have com- 
mitted against humanity have left only one 
solution possible that holds out any promise 
of peace, justice and normal progress in the 
future. That one solution is, to draw up a 
new map of the Ottoman Empire on the 
basis of nationality and historical rights, 
reparation in proportion to services and 
sacrifices during the war, and the proved 
^ See Appendix, p. 188. 



30 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

aptitude of the races concerned for progress 
and development on the lines of Western 
civilization. 

There has long existed in Europe a school 
of politicians who have always asked : 
" If you eliminate Turkish rule over the 
Turks' subject races, what will you put 
in its place?" After what has happened 
in Armenia and Syria, he would be a bold 
man or a prejudiced man who would deny 
that any change will be an improvement. 

The unfitness of the Turk to govern alien, 
and especially Christian peoples has been 
proved by such an overwhelming accumu- 
lation of historical evidence and rivers of 
innocent Christian blood, that to urge the 
contrary must appear like an attempt to 
obscure the sun by the palm of the hand. 

If this war is to bring peace and progress 
to Asia Minor instead of chronic anarchy, 
bloodshed and devastation as in the past, 
there must be an end of Turkish domination 
over alien races in any shape or form. By 
all means give the Turk the chance of 
governing himself in the provinces inhabited 
purely by Turks. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 31 

During the Turkish retreat from Thrace 
in 1913, the evidence of newspaper corre- 
spondents was that the Turk was leaving 
Europe in the same state— moral, material 
and intellectual — as he entered it four cen- 
turies ago. The fact is, that centuries of 
contact with civilization has made no dif- 
ference to the nature of the Turk. War 
brings to the surface the true nature of a 
people as nothing else can. The Turk has 
proved by his conduct in this war that he is 
as cruel and brutal as he was when he first 
swooped down as the scourge of God in 
Asia Minor one thousand years ago. By 
centuries of conquest and domination he has 
acquired an attractive free and easy out- 
ward manner which has stamped him a 
" gentleman " in the eyes of European 
travellers. But the sam.e " gentleman " who 
will charm you with his manner will murder 
or enslave any number of women and 
children without the slightest twinge of 
conscience. Such is the Turkish " gentle- 
man." The Turks are to-day proving their 
gratitude for a hundred years of British and 
French support by throwing the whole of 



32 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

their man-power and resources — ^largely built 
up by British and French capital — into the 
scale on the side of Germany. They have 
put at the disposal of Germany and held 
for Germany the land routes by which alone 
she can hope to threaten the British and 
French colonial empires. They have done 
their best to do England and her Allies all 
the injury they can, and have given the 
enemies of England all the help they can. 
And still the Turk and even the Young Turk 
have friends and protectors in this country.^ 
This, to my mind, is the most astonishing 
phenomenon of the whole war. It must 
appear strange to thinking Moslems that 
there should be found, in great and mighty 
Christian countries, respected and prominent 
men who defend the Young Turks at the 
very moment when their proteges are per- 
secuting and massacring their weak and 
defenceless co-religionists in countless thou- 
sands. I gravely doubt whether such an 

^ See Sir Edwin Pears's article in The Contemporary 
Review, October 1916. (I note this with the deepest 
regret, for Armenians are under a heavy debt of grati- 
tude to Sir Edwin Pears for his generous and authori- 
tative defence of their cause in the past.) 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 88 

act is calculated to enhance the prestige of 
Christianity in the eyes of the Moslem 
world. 

Have the apologists of the Turks ever 
put themselves this question : "If under 
German influence the Turks have been 
capable of attempting the cold-blooded 
murder of a whole nation, how is the fact 
to be explained, that under the same in- 
fluence they were able to gain the reputation 
of ' clean fighters' ? " 

The irony of it all is, that in a war in which 
more than twenty different nations are 
engaged, the Turk and the Turk alone among 
the belligerents should have gained the epi- 
thet of " clean-fighter," though, note well, 
from one of his adversaries only. How is 
this fact to be explained ? Is it seriously 
claimed that the Turk has proved himself, 
under the test of war, superior in morals 
and chivalry to all the nations of Europe ? 

Turkish mentality is not understood in 
Western Europe. The Turk has a fanatical 
bravery which, however, easily degenerates 
into brutality. The Russians, Rumanians 
and Serbs have fought the Turks for cen- 

D 



34 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

turies. It would be interesting to have 
their opinion of his " clean-fighting " quali- 
ties. The fact is, the Turk knows he may 
need English help again some day. He 
knows that there has long existed in England 
a school of politicians which has believed 
that British interests in the Near East will 
be best served by supporting the Turk. He 
knows that England has millions of Moham- 
medan subjects who have still some sympathy 
for him on religious grounds, and whose 
susceptibilities Englishmen are naturally 
anxious to avoid hurting. He also knows 
that the British soldier is a chivalrous 
warrior who gives full credit to his ad- 
versary for any good qualities he may seem 
to possess. He understands the power of 
public opinion in England. He sees, in 
short, that there is in England a fertile 
and responsive psychological soil ready to 
nurture and fructify a hundred-fold the 
smallest show of " clean-fighting " he may 
make. Accordingly, the order goes forth to 
the Turkish soldier to be on his best beha- 
viour whenever and wherever he is fighting 
British troops, and the Turkish soldier obeys 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 35 

with the bHnd obedience which is his chief 
characteristic. 

That is the true explanation of the amaz- 
ing fact that so many — though not all — 
British officers and soldiers have written or 
spoken of the Turk as a clean-fighter. It is 
well-known that some wounded Australians 
who had the misfortune of falling into the 
hands of the Turks were most brutally 
mutilated in the early part of the Dardanelles 
campaign. A wounded and gallant young 
New Zealander told me at a Hampstead 
hospital that the Turks " put three bullets 
into him," while he was being carried to the 
rear of the fighting line on a stretcher. (In 
case my remarks concerning the clean-fight- 
ing qualities of the Turk should be miscon- 
strued or misrepresented as in any way 
implying a doubt as to the evidence of 
British officers and soldiers, I wish to say 
emphatically, what hardly needs affirma- 
tion, that I regard such evidence as abso- 
lutely above doubt or question.) 

The Russians said in one of their official 
communiques that a number of their wounded 
had been mutilated by the Turks. 



36 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Two Russian hospital ships have been deli- 
berately torpedoed by submarines manned 
by Turks and flying the Turkish flag. 

I do not of course suggest that there are 
no really clean-fighting men among the Turks. 
There must be many such. It should be 
borne in mind in this connection that, in the 
early stages of the war, the Turkish army 
contained a considerable sprinkling of Chris- 
tians — Greeks, Armenians, Syrians, etc. But 
to label the Turks as such and as a whole as 
clean fighters and gentle folk is to admit 
the success of the most subtle propagandist 
make-believe of the war and the biggest hoax 
ever played off by Oriental cunning upon 
a chivalrous and unsuspecting adversary. 

Armenians have known the Turk for 
centuries. They have known him as he is, 
not as he affects to be in the presence of 
a European, and they can claim credit for 
some knowledge of the subject. I venture 
to predict that there is severe disillusionment 
in store for those who still believe in the 
genuineness of Turkish " clean-fighting " 
and " chivalry," when the British prisoners 
in Turkey return. Strange indeed must 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 37 

be this Turkish conception of chivalry 
to sanction the enslavement and slaughter 
of women and children in hundreds of 
thousands, instead of protecting them and 
their honour as the ordinary code of chivalry 
demands. 

A Renter telegram from Cairo published in 
The Daily Chronicle of February 13, 1917, 
contained the following — 

'Mt is learnt on reliable authority that 
the British, French, and Russian prisoners 
who are employed on the construction of 
the new line are treated most roughly by 
the Germans and Turks, and that a large 
number are falling ill from dysentery and 
filling the military hospitals at Aleppo. 
Those who have not been attacked by 
dysentery have fallen victims to other 
diseases, resulting from bad food, rough 
treatment, and overwork. 

" One of the tricks adopted by the Ger- 
mans and Turks, in order to throw dust in 
the eyes of the British regarding the treat- 
ment of prisoners, was the honour paid to 
General Townshend, who was returned his 



38 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

sword and accorded the best treatment 
possible. They brought him to Constanti- 
nople, and made him write a letter of thanks 
for the good treatment he and his men had 
received at the hands of the Turks. 

" General Townshend did not know at the 
time he wrote this letter what misery and 
hardship were awaiting his unhappy troops." 

I may here quote in support of my con- 
tention one of the foremost living European 
authorities on Near Eastern affairs, and one 
who certainly will not be suspected of anti- 
Turkish prejudices — I mean Colonel Sir Mark 
Sykes, M.P. Addressing a meeting at Kew 
on January 17, 1917 (I quote from The Near 
East of January 19, 1917), Sir Mark said— 

" The Turk, who in the last ten years 
had thrown back to the primitive Turanian 
Conqueror, was not content with dominat- 
ing, but was now engaged in exterminating 
the Armenian, the Syrian Christian, and the 
Arabs, and was even now beginning to bully 
the Jews. The Turk had overthrown Islam 
as Prussia had overthrown Christianity. 
Prussia had replaced God by Thor and the 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 39 

Cross by his hammer. The Turk had re- 
placed Mohammed by Oghuz and Allah by 
the '' White Wolf of the primitive Turks. 
No belief was to be placed in that cloak of 
chivalry under which in exceptional cases 
the Turk tried to hide his abominable acts.^ 
He might treat General Townshend well; 
but how was he treating the thousands of 
Indians and Englishmen in his hands? If 
it were possible that the Teuton-Turanian 
federation of violence could win this war 
it would be twenty generations before man- 
kind regained its liberty." 

^ In reply to a question by Colonel Yate in the 
House of Commons on February 12, 1917 : " Mr. 
Hope said repeated representation had been made 
to the Turkish Government to allow U.S. represen- 
tatives to visit the camps, but up to now without 
success. Efforts, however, would be continued. In- 
formation had reached the Government that the 
conditions under which officers were interned were 
fairly satisfactory, but the condition of other prisoners 
was deplorable." — Evening Standard. 

Truth says, in its issue of February 21, 1917 : "I 
have in my possession a letter written last autumn 
by a British Army officer, one of the defenders of 
Kut, who was then at a place called Vozga, 160 miles 
from Tigris Valley railhead. The unfortunate prisoner 
complains bitterly of the privations which he and 
others have to endure at the hands of the Turks." 



IV 

ANGLO-RUSSIAN FRIENDSHIP A VITAL NECES- 
SITY FOR PEACE AND PROGRESS IN ASIA 
— MOSLEMS AND TURKISH RULE — ARME- 
NIANS PROGRESSIVE AND DEMOCRATIC 
BY TEMPERAMENT 

The exaggerated panegyrics on the virtues 
of the Turk, while the Turk is at war with 
England and her Allies and Turkish emis- 
saries are busy making all the mischief they 
can among loyal subjects of the British 
Empire, exploiting religion as a weapon of 
squalid intrigue, point to the existence of 
influences which have been at work ever 
since Turkey joined the war, to screen from 
public view and to palliate the enormity of 
Turkish perfidy in making common cause 
with England's enemies in the hour of 
England's difficulty. These same influences 
seem to regard with disfavour the growth of 
Anglo-Russian friendship and would appar- 
ently not be sorry to see some hitch or other 
occur that would weaken or endanger the 
permanence of that friendship. 

This may be an unfounded assumption, 

40 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 41 

and I hope it is. But if these pro-Turkish 
and anti-Russian influences exist in fact, 
and gain enough strength to exercise any 
influence on the course of events after the 
war, it will be a calamity for the smaller 
nations of the Near and Middle East, and in 
fact for all Asia. It will be a hindrance and 
a deterrent to the tranquillity and develop- 
ment that has been so long denied to these 
regions. Close and cordial friendship be- 
tween England and Russia are almost as 
indispensable a condition of life and growth 
and progress to these backward countries as 
light and heat. It is scarcely for me to say 
that it is also necessary for the future peace 
of Asia and the world. The unnatural and 
unfounded mutual distrust that shadowed 
Anglo-Russian relations throughout almost 
the whole of the past century has been 
chiefly responsible for the woes and miseries 
of the peoples of the Near East, Moslems as 
well as Christians. It has kept back the 
clock of progress and civilization for at least 
fifty years. We have felt its effect in our 
daily lives and regard any prospect of its 
return with the utmost apprehension and 
regret. Pan-Turanian intrigues under the 



42 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

cloak of Pan-Islamism will not end with the 
war. They will be continued after the war 
by their protagonists, whose chief concern 
is, not the interests of the Mohammedan 
religion, but the unscrupulous exploitation of 
religious sentiment for personal ends, and the 
disturbance of the tranquillity and ordered 
government which in the present chaotic 
state of these countries are only possible 
under the strong and just arm of British, 
Russian, or French protection. Any weak- 
ening in Anglo-Russian friendship would 
give these intriguers their chance, of which 
they would not be slow to take the fullest 
advantage, with injurious consequences to 
the countries concerned and to the general 
interests of peace. The best elements of 
Islam, and specially the peasant populations 
which form the vast majority of the Moslem 
world, know and have proved by their 
loyalty that they have nothing to fear from 
Britain, Russia and France, who have always 
not only respected, but fostered their religious 
interests and given them, in addition, the in 
estimable blessings of freedom, justice, secur- 
ity and prosperity such as they could never 
expect to enjoy under any other regime. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 43 

It is idle to pretend that any subject race 
loves any form of domination for its own 
sake. But many races and countries in 
Asia and Africa are so situated that inde- 
pendence is beyond the bounds of practi- 
cability. Any change would result in an 
exchange of one domination for another. 
Some forms of domination are sincerely 
welcomed because, as against the evil of 
domination, they have not only conferred 
upon the peoples under their rule benefits 
and blessings which they themselves could 
not possibly have achieved, but have allowed 
them freedom of development on their 
national lines. Such in varying degrees is 
the nature of British, French, Russian, and 
I may add, Dutch dominion over the alien 
races under their rule. What has Turkish 
domination been to its subject races? An 
unmitigated curse to Christian, Moslem and 
Jew ahke, with this difference, that while 
the Moslem and Jew have been reduced by 
merciless taxation and robbery to extreme 
poverty, the Christian races have been bled 
almost to death. The Turks have deliber- 
ately fostered the criminal propensities of 
large sections of their people and encouraged 



44 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

their free indulgence to cheek the growth! 
and progress of the moral and civilizing 
elements in their dominions. If some of the 
Moslems of India, Egypt or Tunis, whose 
sympathy with the Turks on religious 
grounds every one will understand and 
respect, would live under Turkish rule for a 
few months, I have no doubt they would be 
completely cured of their love for the Turk 
^s such, hasten back to their homes and beg 
the British and the French to remain in* 
their countries for ever. Similarly, if it were 
possible for the most rabid pro-Turks in 
this or any European country to live some 
time under the Turk, disguised as Armenians 
or Syrians, they would also be cured and 
more than cured of their admiration for 
the Turk; then only would they come to 
understand his real nature. 

The following account of the experiences of 
some Indian pilgrims at Kerbela at the out- 
break of war, which appeared in The Times of 
June 6, 1916, bears out my contention — 

" The Bombay Government have pub- 
lished the story of an Indian Moslem pilgrim, 
Zakir Husain, who recently escaped from 
Kerbela (Baghdad Vilayet), whither he went 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 45 

on pilgrimage with his mother and sister in 
the summer of 1914. 

" Zakir Husain states that after the out- 
break of war all routes homewards were 
blocked, and the many Indian pilgrims at 
Kerbela were subjected to the utmost dis- 
comfort and cruelty. The Turkish authori- 
ties issued orders that the goods and women 
of Indians were the legal property of those 
who plundered them. Their houses were 
searched, their goods taken, and dozens of 
Indians were arrested and deported to the 
Aleppo side, while their families and children 
were left in Kerbela. 

" Throughout these fourteen months," he 
continued, " we never got meals more than 
once a day. We could not get any work, 
and consequentl}^ we had to beg from door 
to door in order to get a few scraps of bread to 
eat, and the state of the women and children 
was worse even than that of the men. For 
a man to be an Indian was considered a suffi- 
cient reason by Turks to torture and imprison 
him. We protested that we were Moslems, 
but they never paid heed. They themselves 
are no Moslems, and do not act according to 
the precepts of Islam. According to what I 



46 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

heard, the Indians in Nejef, Kazimain, an( 
Baghdad have also been treated in the same 
cruel way as we were; hundreds have been 
deported and their houses pillaged." 

The following from The Times of Decem- 
ber 26, 1916, is another illustration of the 
way Turks treat Moslems of another race who 
refuse to become the blind slaves of their 
political madness — 

" Emir Faisal, commander of the Arabian 
forces in the vicinity of Medina, has telegraphed 
to Mecca stating that the Turks have hanged 
and crucified and employed every species of 
barbarity against the population of Medina." 

Turn now from that picture to the follow- 
ing appeal made to Armenians by one of 
their principal Tiflis daily papers, Mschak 
(Labourer), of May 16, 1915— 

" To-day the Moslem Benevolent Society 
is organizing a collection for building and 
maintaining a shelter for the children of the 
(Moslem) refugees. War causes suffering 
to the population of the country without 
distinction of race or creed. Moslems as 
well as Christians have to face the effects of 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 47 

the war, therefore the scheme of the Moslem 
Benevolent Society to establish a shelter for 
the children of Moslem refugees is deserving of 
all sympathy and support. We are convinced 
that the Armenian community also, having in 
mind the universal idea of humanity, will 
take part in the collection and do their duty 
as a humane people and good neighbours." 

These incidents, small in themselves, bring 
into strong relief the difference between the 
mentality and degree of civilization of the 
two races. The Armenian appeal on behalf 
of refugee Moslem children at a time when 
one half of their own race was in the throes 
of the most ferocious of the numerous attacks 
made upon its existence, is also incidentally 
a reply, more trenchant than the most 
eloquent argument in words, to those pro- 
Turks who have from time to time expressed 
fears for the rights of the Turks, Kurds, 
Tcherkesses, Kizilbashis, etc., in an autono- 
mous Armenia. Such a fear is either due 
to ignorance of the characteristics of the 
races concerned, or to prejudice. It is 
inconceivable that any Armenian Govern- 
ment would tolerate, much less impose upon 



48 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

orderly and good citizens, an injustice which 
Armenians have themselves endured and 
struggled against for generations, and which* 
is, for that reason, abhorrent to their very 
nature. A study of the Armenian Church 
organization will prove to the most sceptical 
that the Armenian temperament is essentially 
democratic. In the smallest village the 
candidate for priesthood must be elected, 
by a vote of the inhabitants before he can' 
be ordained by the bishop of the diocese. 
The Armenian deputies in the Russian State 
Duma as well as the late members of the 
Ottoman Parliamxcnt are and were supporters 
of the Progressives. Armenians who have 
risen to positions of influence in the service 
of foreign countries have invariably used 
their influence in the cause of progress. 
General Loris Melikoff as Minister of the 
Interior had actually prepared a scheme for 
the reform of the Government of Russia 
when his Imperial Master, the Czar Alexan- 
der II, died, and the scheme was shelved. 
Nubar Pasha, the famous Egyptian-Arme- 
nian statesman, for many years Prime 
Minister, was largely responsible for the 
abolition of the corvee in Egypt, and the 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 49 

introduction of many other reforms. The 
writer of Nubar Pasha's biography in the 
! Encyclopcedia Britannica, referring to his sub- 
I stitution of Mixed Courts in place of the 
I " Capitulations," says (Eleventh Ed., Vol. 19, 
p. 843), " That in spite of the jealousies of all 
the Powers, in spite of the opposition of the 
, Porte, he should have succeeded, places him 
at once in the first rank of statesmen of his 
period." Prince Malcolm Khan, for some 
years Persian Minister in London, sowed the 
I first seeds of constitutional government in 
Persia, for the defence of which another 
^ Armenian, Yeprem Khan, laid down his life 
while leading the constitutional struggle 
[against Mohamed AU Shah. The first consti- 
jtution of the Ottoman Empire, known as the 
JMidhat Constitution, was largely the work of 
iMidhat Pasha's Armenian Under-Secretary, 
Odian Eflendi. These are but a few outstand- 
ing instances. It must appear inconceivable 
jto right-minded men that a race with such a 
past record, achieved under all sorts of handi- 
caps, will either establish a regime of tyranny 
I over other races or prove incapable of self- 
government after a transition period under 
European advisers, as is alleged by some. 



n 



V 



ARMENIA AS A PEACE PROBLEM— VIEWS OF 
THE '* MANCHESTER GUARDIAN " AND THE 
** SPECTATOR "—CAN ARMENIANS STAND 
ALONE AMONG THE KURDS ?— AMERICAN 
OPINION AND THE FUTURE OF ARMENIA! 

Although the Allies have declared in their 
reply to President Wilson that one of their 
aims is " the Hberation of the peoples who 
now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of 
the Turks," no official or authoritative 
statement has yet been made by the Alhed 
Governments as regards the precise future 
status of Armenia. Mr. Asquith in his 
Guildhall speech spoke of " reparation and 
redemption." M. Briand in a letter to 
M. Louis Martin, Senator of the Var, 
published in the Courier du Parlement (Paris) 
of November 12, 1916, says : " When the 
hour for legitimate reparation shall have 
struck, France will not forget the terrible 

/ 



50 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 51 

trials of the ArmenianSj and, in accord 
with her AUies, she will take the necessary 
measures to ensure for Armenia a life of 
peace and progress." M. Anatole France, 
in his speech at the great " Homage a 
PArmenie " meeting in the Sorbonne in 
April 1916, used these words : " L'Armenie 
expire, mais elle renaitra. Le peu de sang 
qui lui reste est un sang precieux dont 
sortira une posterite heroique. Un peuple 
qui ne veut pas mourir ne meurt pas. 
Apres la victoire de nos armees, qui com- 
battent pour la liberte, les Allies auront de 
grands devoirs a remplir. Et le plus sacre 
de ces devoirs sera de rendre la vie aux 
peuples martyrs, a la Belgique, a la Serbie. 
Alors ils assureront la surete et I'independ- 
ance de TArmenie. Penches sur elle, ils lui 
diront : ' Ma soeur, leve toi ! ne souffre plus. 
Tu es desormais libre de vivre selon ton 
genie et foi ! ' " ^ 

^ " Armenia is dying, but she will be born again — 
the little blood that is left to her is the precious 
blood from which will arise a heroic posterity. A 
people that refuses to die will not die. After the 
victory of our armies, which are fighting for justice 
and liberty, the Allies will have great duties to fulfil. 



52 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

M. Paul Deschanel, the President of the 
French Senate, and M. Painleve, Minister 
of PubHc Instruction, spoke in more or less 
similar terms. 

The most recent authoritative reference 
to Armenia— and one which is of special 
importance, coming as it does from a mem- 
ber of the Inner Cabinet or War Council- 
is Mr. Arthur Henderson's statement in his 
conversation with the correspondent of the 
New York Tribune, reported in The Times 
of January 8, 1916, as follows : " Speaking 
of the part of Turkey in the war, Mr. 
Henderson said that though Armenian 
atrocities were not much talked about here, 
they had undoubtedly made a deep impres- 
sion on the minds of the working popula- 
tion, who, he thought, were determined that 
never again should a Christian nation be 
under the yoke of the Turk." These are 
comforting words indeed to Armenians, as 

And the most sacred of these duties will be to bring 
back to life the martyred peoples, Belgium and Serbia. 
Then they will assure the security and independence 
of Armenia. Bending over her they will say to her : 
' Rise, sister ! suffer no more. Henceforth you are free 
to live according to your genius and your faith ! '" 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 58 

were those of Mr. Asquith at the Guildhall. 
Nothing could give the Armenian people 
more comfort and hope for the future than 
this assurance of the British working man's 
sympathy — of which they never had any 
doubt — and his determination to see them 
freed from the Turkish yoke once and for all. 

But here again Mr. Henderson — no doubt 
for very good reasons — gave no intimation 
of the intentions of the British or Allied 
Governments concerning the new status of 
Armenia after its liberation from the Turkish 
yoke. 

It has been suggested that American 
opinion would favour annexation by Russia 
as a means of putting an end to Turkish 
atrocities and misgovernment of Armenia. 
This reading of American opinion is not 
supported by President Wilson's statement 
in his historic speech to the Senate that 
'' no right anywhere exists to hand peoples 
from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they 
were property." All the Allied countries, 
and probably all neutrals, are determined 
to see the end of the Turkish reign of terror 
in Armenia. But annexation by Russia or 



54 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

any other Great Power, before the blood is 
dry of hundreds of thousands of Armenians 
sacrificed for their faith and passionate 
adherence to their ideal of nationality, must 
seem particularly unjust to all fair-minded 
men in all countries, especially the great 
American democracy, who themselves put 
an end to misgovernment of a much milder 
kind in Cuba, but did not annex it. Indeed, 
having herself, jointly with her Allies, I 
solemnly laid down the " recognition of the 
principle of nationalities " as one of the 
terms of peace stated in the Allied Note to 
President Wilson, it seems unthinkable that 
Russia, on her part, would entertain the 
intention of annexing, and especially of 
annexing a country and people who have 
paid a terrible price largely on account of 
their sympathy with and support of the 
Allied cause, and rendered services the 
value of which Russia herself has generously 
recognized. 

It is argued in some quarters that the 
Armenian highlands are a strategic necessity 
to Russia. There is a " scrap of paper " 
ring in such an argument, and I for one can- 
not believe that the justice-loving Russian 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 55 

people would allow such considerations to 
override a solemn pledge and the principle of 
common justice. An Allied protectorate with 
Russia acting as their mandatory would place 
these strategically important regions under 
practically as effective a Russian control as 
outright annexation, while it would have the 
additional advantages of giving real effect to 
the " recognition of the principle of nation- 
alities," and avoiding injustice, injury and 
affront to the national sentiment of a people 
which has endured such grievous sufferings 
and sacrifices to uphold that sentiment. 

As I write, two important references to 
the future of Armenia have appeared in the 
Press. One in the Manchester Guardian — 
that old and constant champion of wronged 
and suffering humanity — quoted by The 
Times of December 30, 1916, as follows : 
'^ Another word remains — Armenia — a word 
of ghastly horror, carrying the memory of 
deeds not done in the world since Christ 
was born — a country swept clear by the 
wholesale murder of its people. , To Turkey 
that country must never and under no 
circumstances go back. ..." 

The other reference is made by the 



56 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Spectator in its issue of December 30, in a 
leading article entitled " The Allied Terms." 
It says — 

" The process of freeing nationalities from 
oppression must be applied organically to 
the Turkish Empire. The Armenians, or 
what remains of the race, whose agonized 
calls for help and mercy have been heard 
even through the din of the present war, 
will probably have to be placed under the 
tutelage of Russia. They could not stand 
alone among the Kurds." 

If by " Russian tutelage " the Spectator 
means the setting up of a self-governing 
Armenia under Russian suzerainty, that 
would amount, in my opinion, to the 
approximate realization of the hopes and 
aspirations of the Armenian people, pro- 
vided that by " Armenia " is understood 
the six vilayets and Cilicia; provided also 
that Great Britain and France retained 
the rights of Protecting Powers as in the 
case of Greece. Anything short of this, 
any parcelling out of Armenia, either by 
annexation or " tutelage " of different 
parts under different Powers, would not 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 57 

only be irreconcilable with the "recog- 
nition of the principle of nationalities " 
which the Allies have solemnly declared to 
be one of their principal aims and terms of 
peace; it would imply an outrage upon the 
ideal of nationality which is the ruling 
passion of Armenians everywhere. Lynch, 
the great Armenian authority, has called 
the Armenians " the strongest nationalists 
in the world." This ideal of nationality has 
grown stronger, more alive and resolute 
than ever by their services and unimaginable 
sufferings and sacrifices in the war. " The 
little blood that is left them " has become 
doubly and trebly precious to the survivors. 
They rightly feel that they have established, 
and more than established, their title to 
autonomy and a strong claim upon the 
whole-hearted support of the Allied Powers 
to enable them to stand on their feet again 
and make a fair start on the road to nation- 
hood. If Armenia is cut up and parcelled 
out without regard for this fervent living 
sentiment of Armenian nationalism, and 
their high hopes and expectations are dashed 
to the ground, it will conceivably engender 
in all Armenians a deep sense of wrong and 



58 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



1 



injustice, an intense discontent with the 
new order of things, that are not Hkely to 
conduce to that contentment and that 
smoothness of relations between the 
governors and the governed that are the 
essentials and the fundamental preliminary 
steps towards setting these much-troubled 
regions on the road towards good govern- 
ment, progress and civilization. 

The " principle of nationalities " and 
of " government by the consent of the 
governed " will be applied all along the 
line : Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, Serbia, 
Poland, Bohemia, Transylvania, Arabia, 
Syria, Palestine, will have restored to them 
or will be granted the forms of government 
most acceptable to the peoples concerned. 
These true and righteous principles, which 
will herald the dawn of universal justice 
and morality in the treatment of their 
weaker brethren by the Great Powers of 
Europe, will cease to operate only when 
Armenia comes to be dealt with. Armenia 
alone, who has suffered the most tragic, the 
most grievous and heartrending Calvary, 
shall be denied an Easter. Why? Be- 
cause the Armenian people have lost too 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 59 

much blood; because they have paid too 
high a price for their fidehty to their faith, 
the preservation of their distinctive national 
life and their strong support of the Allied 
cause. That would be an unspeakably cruel 
and bitter climax to the unending nightmare 
of Turkish tyranny, the Great Tragedy and 
martyrdom of the Armenian people. It will 
be nothing less than a confirmation of the 
death sentence passed by Abdul Hamid 
and the Young Turks on the ideal of 
Armenian nationality. 

Let those who speak lightly of annexation 
by Russia put themselves in the place of 
the tens of thousands of Armenians who 
have lost wife and children, sons, brothers, 
fathers, near or distant relatives, both in 
massacre as well as in what they under- 
stood to be a sacred struggle for liberty, to 
say nothing of their complete economic 
ruin. They would be much more or much 
less than human if they did not feel a deep 
and smarting sense of wrong at seeing all 
their appalling sacrifices and important ser- 
vices result in a mere exchange of the 
Kaimakam for the Chinovnik, It is far 
indeed from my purpose to put the two 



60 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

types of official and the respective systems 
of government they represent on the same 
level. They differ as day from night. In 
my opinion and to my knowledge the vast 
majority of Armenians will welcome Russian 
suzerainty with sincere satisfaction. But, 
after the ordeal of blood and fire through 
which they have passed, they must feel, as 
I believe they do feel with ample justifica- 
tion, that they have a right to a voice 
and a liberal measure of participation in 
the government of their own country. 

I cannot do better than quote here a 
passage from Mr. Gladstone's great speech 
on the Treaty of Berlin, which is applicable 
to Armenia, and than which there could be 
no wiser, more just or authoritative guidance 
for the formation of a sound and just view 
on the Armenian and kindred problems — 

" My meaning, Sir, was that, for one, I 
utterly repelled the doctrine that the power 
of Turkey is to be dragged to the ground 
for the purpose of handing over the Dominion 
that Turkey now exercises to some other 
great State, be that State either Russia or 
Austria or even England. In my opinion 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 61 

such a view is utterly false, and even ruinous, 
and has been the source of the main diffi- 
culties in which the Government have been 
involved, and in which they have involved 
the country. I hold that those provinces 
of the Turkish Empire, which have been so 
cruelly and unjustly ruled, ought to be 
regarded as existing, not for the sake of 
any other Power whatever, but for the sake 
of the populations by whom they are in- 
habited. The object of our desire ought to 
be the development of those populations on 
their own soil, as its proper masters, and 
as the persons with a view to whose welfare 
its destination ought to be determined." 

It may be argued that things have changed 
since 1878. The answer to that is that 
principles are immutable. The only change 
is the cruel reduction of the Armenian 
population. I ask, first of all : " Is it fair 
and right and just that we should suffer 
massacre and persecution for generations, 
and when the time for reparation comes, 
should be penalized because so many of us 
have been massacred ? " Secondly, it should 
not be forgotten that although the Armenian 



62 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

element of the population has been reduced, 
the Turks and Kurds have also suffered very 
considerable losses. Thirdly, the Armenians 
are much more advanced intellectually to-day 
than they were forty years ago, while their 
neighbours — Turks, Kurds, and others — are 
stagnating in the same primitive state as 
they were forty — or, for that matter, four 
hundred — years ago. Another circumstance 
which adds materially to the chances of 
success of an autonomous Armenia is the 
existence of a number of flourishing Armenian 
communities of various sizes in other coun- 
tries — in the Russian Caucasus and the 
Russian Empire, Persia, the United States, 
Egypt, the Balkans, France, Great Britain, 
India, Java, etc. — which are at the present 
time looking forward with enthusiasm and 
readiness for sacrifice, to "do their bit " 
in the sacred work of the reconstruction of 
their stricken and beloved Motherland. 

Coming to the Spectator's contention that 
" they (the Armenians) could not stand 
alone against the Kurds," I can assure the 
SjJectator that there is no cause whatever 
for apprehension on that score, if only the 
Russian Government and Army authorities 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 63 

will agre^ to allow the Armenians to organize 
under their guidance and supervision, imme- 
diately after the war, a number of flying 
columns from among discharged Armenian 
volunteers and soldiers in the regular army, 
for the specific purpose of carrying out a 
" drive " from one end of the country to 
the other and disarming the Kurds. The 
Armenian volunteers, of whom I speak in 
another chapter, have had a good deal of 
fighting to do with the Kurds during the 
war and have proved more than their match, 
in many cases against superior numbers. 

The prevailing erroneous belief that the 
Armenians " could not stand alone among 
the Kurds " has its origin in the fact that 
for centuries (up to 1908) Armenians have 
been an easy prey to the Kurds by reason 
of their being prohibited to possess or carry 
arms on pain of death, while the Kurds were 
supplied with arms from the government 
arsenals, and encouraged and supported 
in every way by the central government 
to harass the Armenians. What chance 
would the bravest people in the world have 
under such circumstances? Since 1908, 
when the prohibition of carrying arms by 



64 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 4^1 

Christians was relaxed, it is a well-known 
fact, attested by European travellers, that 
Kurds never attacked Armenian villages 
which they knew to be armed. Zeytoon 
and Sassoon have demonstrated beyond 
question that when Armenians have met 
Turks on anything like equal terms, they 
have proved their match. These isolated, 
compact communities of fearless moun- 
taineers were never entirely subjugated by 
the Turks until the outbreak of the present 
war, when the Zeytoonlis were overwhelmed 
by Turkish treachery and the Sassoonlis 
died fighting to the last man and woman 
{see Blue-book, pp. 84 and 87). 

In 1905 the Tartars, who are nearly twice 
as numerous as the Armenians in the 
Caucasus, made a sudden attack upon the 
latter in the Hamidian style. But thanks 
to the equity of Russian government, 
Armenians in the Caucasus were as free to 
carry arms as Tartars, so the Tartars soon 
regained their " humane sentiments " and 
offered peace to stop further bloodshed. I 
would recommend those who entertain any 
fears of Armenians being able to defend 
themselves against Kurds or Tartars to read 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 65 

Villari's Fire and Stvord in the Caucasus and 
Moore's The Orient Express, 

At all events Europe will not be taking 
any risk in giving the Armenians the oppor- 
tunity of proving that they can " make 
good " in spite of the Kurds, and also, as 
we hope, can gradually civilize the Kurds 
and other neighbouring backward races. ^ 

As far as I know (in fact I have no doubt 
about it), Armenians are prepared to take 
the risk of " standing alone among the 
Kurds, provided that the Entente Powers 
afford them the necessary assistance during 
the first few years of reconstruction and 
initiation, and above all, provided that they 
enjoy the whole-hearted and benevolent 
good-will of Russia, for which, it is as 
certain as anything human can be, their 
great protector and neighbour will reap a 
rich harvest in the future — as rich a harvest 
as that which Britain is reaping to-day for 
her act of justice and statesmanship in 
South Africa. 

^ Armenians have from time to time opened schools 
for Kurdish children, but their efforts were not success- 
ful, mainly owing to the unfriendly attitude of the 
Turkish authorities. 

F 



VI 

Armenia's services in the war 

I HAVE spoken earlier in these pages of 
the services of the Armenians to the AlUed 
cause in the war. What are these services ? 
The Armenian name has been so long and 
so often associated with massacre that it 
has given rise to the general but utterly un- 
founded belief by those who have not gone 
deeper into the matter, that Armenians are 
devoid of physical courage and allow them- 
selves to be butchered hke sheep. ^ Where 

Pierre Loti, the well-known French writer, who 
was an ardent Turkophile before the war, after adding 
his quota to the current, and, one is constrained to 
say, cheap, comments on the lack of courage and 
numberless other failings of the Armenians, adds the 
following P.S. in his Turquie Agoriisa?ite (pp. 94-95) 
after a longer sojourn in the country and closer con- 
tact with realities. (I give the translation from the 
French.) — 

'' Before concluding I desire to make honourable, 
sincere and spontaneous amends to the Armenians, 
at least as regards their attitude in the ranks of the 

66 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 67 

this belief is not based upon igorance of the 
facts and circumstances, it is, I am bound 
to say, a particularly dastardly piece of 
calumny upon a people who have groaned 
for centuries under a brutal tyrant's heel, 
with an indomitable spirit that has ever been 

Ottoman Army. This is certainly not due to the 
protestations which they have inserted in the Con- 
stantinople Press by the power of gold." [This is a 
curious admission by Pierre Loti; one of the stock 
cries of the Turkophiles is that the Turk is above 
" bakshish."] * ' No, I have many friends among Turkish 
officers ; I have learned from them, and there can be 
no doubt, that my earlier information was exaggerated, 
and that, notwithstanding a good number of previous 
desertions, the Armenians placed under their orders 
conducted themselves with courage. Therefore, I am 
happy to be able to withdraw without arriere pensee 
what I have said on this subject, and I apologize." 

Of all British games and sports Armenians in differ- 
ent parts of the British Empire, the Dutch Colonies 
and Persia have manifested a natural predilection for 
Rugby Football, in which physical courage comes into 
play more than in most other games. In recent years 
the Armenian College of Calcutta won the Calcutta 
Schools' Cup three years in succession, which gave it 
the right to retain the trophy. I am glad to see in the 
March issue of Ararat that the Boy Scouts of the same 
college, under Scoutmaster Dr. G. D. Hope, have won 
the King's Flag, presented by His Majesty to the 
troop having the largest number of King's Scouts in 
India and Burmah. 



68 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

and is even to-day the Turk's despair. The 
struggle that has gone on for five or six 
centuries between Armenian and Turk 
symbohzes, perhaps better than any event 
in history, the invincibiUty of the spirit 
of Christianity and Uberty and the ideal of 
nationality against overwhelming odds of 
ruthless tyranny, the savagery of the Dark 
Ages and the unscrupulous and mendacious 
exploitation of religious passion. That 
struggle has been as unequal as can well be 
imagined, but we have not permitted the 
forces of darkness to triumph over the spirit 
of Light and Liberty, though the price paid 
has come very near that of our annihilation. 
Nevertheless, we have been able, in this 
world-wide struggle, not dissimilar to our 
own long struggle in the moral issues in- 
volved, to render services to the cause of 
the Allies, which is the cause of Right and 
Justice, and therefore our cause also, quite 
out of proportion, in their effect, to our 
numbers as a race or our contribution of 
fighting men as compared with the vast 
armies engaged, although that contribution 
has been by no means negligible. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 69 

On the eve of Turkey's entry into the war 
the Young Turks employed every conceiv- 
able means— persuasion, cajolery, intimida- 
tion, the promise of a large autonomous 
Armenia, etc.— to induce the Armenian party 
leaders to prevail upon the Russian Arme- 
nians to join themselves in a mass rally to 
the Turkish flag against Russia. They sent 
a number of emissaries to Russian Armenia 
with the same object. The Turk must have 
a pecuHar understanding of human nature, 
and not much sense of humour, to have the 
naivete to make such overtures to Armenians 
after having persecuted and harried and 
massacred them for centuries. All the 
Armenian leaders promised was a correct 
attitude as Ottoman subjects. They would 
do neither more nor less than what they 
were bound to do by the laws of the country. 
They could not interfere with the freedom 
of action of their compatriots in the Caucasus 
who owed allegiance to Russia. They kept 
their promise scrupulously in the first months 
of the war. Armenian conscripts went to 
the depots without enthusiasm. How could 
it be otherwise ? What claim had the Turks 



70 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



1 



upon the sympathy and support of their 
Armenian subjects? Is sympathy won by 
tyranny, or loyalty bred by massacre ? They 
(the Armenians) were placed in a most diffi- 
cult position. They were naturally reluc- 
tant to fight against the Russians, and the 
position was aggravated by the fact that the 
Russian Caucasian army was largely com- 
posed of Russian Armenians. But in spite 
of these sentimental difficulties, mobilization 
was completed without any serious trouble. 
Soon, however, Armenians began to desert 
in large numbers; the Young Turks had 
joined the war against their wish and 
advice ; they had not their heart in the busi- 
ness, and, last, but not least, they were 
harried, ill-treated and insulted by their 
Turkish officers and comrades at every turn : 
there were exceptions, of course, but that 
was the position generally in the closing 
months of 1914. Let me add that there were 
large numbers of Turkish deserters also, and 
that the Armenian leaders did all they could 
to send the deserters of their own nation- 
ality back to the ranks, doing so forcibly in 
some cases. Then came the defeat of the 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 71 

Turks at Sarikamysh and the ejection of 
Djevdet Bey and his force from Azerbaijan. 
On his return to Van, Djevdet Bey told his 
friends : " It is the Armenians much more 
than the Russians who are fighting us." 

The massacres and deportations began 
soon after the collapse of the Turkish inva- 
sion of the Caucasus and Northern Persia, 
and it is only after it was seen clearly that 
the Turks were determined to deport or 
destroy them all that the Armenians in 
many places took up arms in self-defence. 
There was no armed resistance before that, 
and the Turkish and German allegations of 
an Armenian revolt are a barefaced inven- 
tion to justify a crime, a tithe of which not 
one but a hundred revolts cannot justify or 
palliate. This is proved beyond all ques- 
tion by Mr. Toynbee's concise and illuminat- 
ing historical summary at the end of the 
Blue-book on the Treatment of Armenians 
by the Turks during the war. There was 
no revolt. But when the Armenians were 
driven to self-defence under the menace of 
extermination, they fought with what arms 
they could scrape together, with the courage 



72 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

of desperation. In Shahin-Karahissar they 
held out for three months and were only 
reduced by artillery brought from Erzerum. 
In Van and Jebel-Mousa they defended 
themselves against heavy odds until relieved 
by the Russians and the Armenian volunteers 
in the first case, and rescued by French and 
British cruisers in the second. The Turkish 
force sent against the insurgents of Jebel- 
Mousa was detached from the army intended 
for the attack on the Suez Canal. 

Of course ill-armed, poorly equipped bands 
without artillery, wanting in almost all neces- 
saries of modern warfare, brave as they may 
be, cannot possibly maintain a prolonged 
resistance against superior forces of regulars 
well supplied with artillery, machine-guns 
and all that is needed in war. Nevertheless, 
some of these bands seem to have succeeded 
in holding out for many months, and it is 
believed in the Caucasus that there are 
groups of armed Armenians still holding 
out in some parts of the higher mountains 
behind the Turkish lines. ^ It will be remem- 

^ I may here point out that — though it is stated in 
the admirable historical summary in the Blue-book 
(p. 649) that " the number of those who have emerged 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 73 

bered that some weeks ago — I do not recall 
the date — a Constantinople telegram re- 
printed in The Times from German papers 
stated that there were 30,000 armed Armenian 
rebels in the vilayet of Sivas. This is an 
obvious exaggeration, and it may simply 
mean that a considerable number of Arme- 
nians were still defending themselves against 
the menace of massacre. When the Russian 
army entered Trebizond a band of some 
400 armed Armenians came down from the 
mountains and surrendered themselves to 
the Russians. Quite recently a band of 
seventy men cut through the Turkish lines 
and gained the Russian lines in the neigh- 
bourhood of Erzinjian. 

The Turks have repeatedly declared that 
the " Armenian revolt " threatened to place 
their army between two fires. The particle 
of truth that there is in this assertion is, as 
may be judged by the facts so far known as 
cited above, that the Armenian resistance 

from hiding since the Russian occupation is extra- 
ordinarily small " — this number has been growing very 
considerably of late, as may be seen from Mr. Back- 
house's telegram to the chairman of the Armenian 
Refugees (Lord Mayor's) Fund, dated Tifiis, November 
27, 1916, published in the newspapers. 



74 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

to massacre and deportation proved to be 
more serious than they had anticipated, and 
that they had to detach large numbers of 
troops and in some cases artillery and 
machine-guns to keep these " rebels " in 
check. It is consequently undeniable that 
Armenian armed resistance to deportation 
and massacre has been a considerable hin- 
drance to the full development of Turkish 
military power during the war and has, in 
that way, been of material, though, indirect 
assistance to the Allied forces operating 
against the Turks. To this may be added 
the demoralizing effect that the deplorable 
state of affairs created by the Turks in 
their dominions must have exercised on the 
morale of their people. 

Such in general outline have been the 
services of the Turkish Armenians to the 
Allied cause. It is not my purpose here 
to endeavour to appraise the possibly ill- 
concealed, but not by any means ostentatious 
or provocative, sympathy of the Armenians 
for the Allies, upon the sinister designs of the 
Young Turks. I will content myself with 
the description of a significant cartoon that 
appeared early in the war in the Turkish 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 75 

comic paper KaragOz in Constantinople. The 
cartoon depicted two Turks discussing the 
war. " Where do you get your war news 
from ? " asked Turk number one. " I do 
not need war news," repUed Turk number 
two ; ''I can follow the course of the war 
by the expression on the faces of the Ar- 
menians I meet. When they are happy I 
know the Allies are winning, when depressed 
I know the Germans have had a victory." 

The following extract from a dead Turkish 
officer's notebook, reproduced in the Russkaia 
Viedomosti (No. 205), throws some light on 
the Turkish estimate of the value of Armenian 
support in the war. " If our Armenians had 
been with us," wrote this Turkish officer, " we 
would have defeated the Russians long ago." ^ 

The services of the Russian Armenians 
to the Allied cause, but principally, of course 
to the Russian cause during the war, have 
been of a more direct and positive character 
and of far-reaching importance. They may 
be divided into two distinct parts, namely, 

^ Compare an Armenian officer's evidence, Blue- 
book, p. 231, "... they laid the blame for this 
defeat upon the Armenians, though he could not tell 
why.'^ 



76 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

military and political; and in order the 
better to explain the full meaning of the 
Armenian '' strong support of the Russian 
cause" (in the words of The Times), I will 
deal with each of the two parts separately. 
The Armenian population of Russian 
Armenia and the Caucasus numbers, roughly, 
1,750,000 souls, and there are probably 
another 100,000 to 200,000 Armenians scat- 
tered over the other parts of the empire. 
They are liable to military service as Russian 
subjects, and it is estimated that they have 
given to the Russian army some 160,000 men. 
Apart from this not negligible number of 
men called to the colours in the ordinary 
course of mobilization, the Armenians, as 
a result of an understanding with the autho- 
rities, organized and equipped at their own 
expense a separate auxiliary volunteer force 
under tried and experienced guerilla leaders, 
such as Andranik, Keri and others, to co- 
operate with the Caucasian army. This force 
contained a number of Turkish Armenians, 
mostly refugees from previous massacres. 
Some twenty thousand men responded to 
the call for volunteers, though I believe not 
more than about ten thousand could be armed 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 77 

and sent to the front. The greatest enthu- 
siasm prevailed. Armenian students at the 
Universities of Moscow and Petrograd and 
educational institutions in the Caucasus 
vied with each other in their eagerness to 
take part in the fight for the liberation of 
their kinsmen from bondage. Several young 
lady students offered to enlist, but I believe 
all but two or three were dissuaded from 
taking part in actual fighting. Boys of 
fourteen and fifteen years ran away from 
home and tramped long distances to join 
the volunteer battalions. It is recorded that 
an Armenian widow at Kars, on hearing that 
her only son had been killed in battle, 
exclaimed, " Curse me that I did not give 
birth to ten more sons to fight and die for 
the freedom of our country." 

The volunteer force was not large, but it 
was a mobile force well adapted to the semi- 
guerilla kind of warfare carried on in Armenia, 
and the men knew the country. They seem 
to have done good work as scouts in par- 
ticular, though they took part in many severe 
engagements and were mentioned once or 
twice in Russian communiques as " our 
Armenian detachments." Generous appre- 



78 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

ciation of the services and gallantry of the 
volunteers as well as of Armenians in the 
army has been expressed by Russian military 
commanders, the Press, and public men. 
High military honours were conferred upon 
the volunteer leaders, and His Imperial 
Majesty the Czar honoured the Armenian 
nation by his visit to the Armenian Cathe- 
dral in Tiflis, demonstrating his satisfaction 
with the part played by Armenians in the 
war.^ 

There are, of course, many Armenian high 
officers in the Russian army, including 
several generals, but so far they have not 
had the opportunity of producing in this 
war outstanding military leaders of the cali- 
bre of Loris Melikoff and Terkhougasoff. 
General Samsonoff, ** the Russian Kitchener," 
was killed early in the war in East Prussia 
in his gallant and successful attempt to 
relieve the pressure on Paris. 

^ In an article on " The Armenian Massacres " in 
the April Contemporary Review, Mr. Lewis Einstein, 
ex-member of the staff of the United States Embassy 
in Constantinople, says : '* Talaat attributed the disas- 
ters that befell the Turks at Sarikamish, in Azerbaijan 
and at Van, to the Armenian volunteers." 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 79 

The political effect of the strong and 
enthusiastic support of the Russian cause by 
Armenians has been to keep in check the 
discontented and fanatical section of the 
Tartars and other Moslems of the Caucasus, 
who would have been disposed to make 
common cause with the Turks whenever a 
favourable opportunity should present itself 
to do so without much risk to themselves. 
The Tartars and other Moslem elements of 
the Caucasus are as a whole genuinely loyal 
to Russia, but the existence of a minority 
who would welcome the success of the 
Turkish invasion cannot be denied. Some 
of the Ajars did, in fact, join the Turks 
during their invasion of Ardahan. 

All things considered, therefore, those 
who have any knowledge of the racial and 
political conditions in the Caucasus will not, 
I think, regard it as in any sense an exag- 
geration to assert that the whole-hearted 
support of the Armenians — and I may also 
add, though in a lesser degree, the Georgians 
— has contributed very materially to the 
success of Russian arms in the Caucasian 
theatre of the war. The absence of that 



80 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

support, or even mere formal or lukewarm 
support, would not only most probably have 
had serious consequences for the Caucasus, 
it would have left the whole of Persia at the 
mercy of the Turks ; and who can say what 
the consequences of such a catastrophe would 
have been on Arabia, Mesopotamia, Afghan- 
istan and even the northern frontiers of 
India itself? 

Nearly all the able-bodied Armenians in 
France, between 1000 and 1500 strong, joined 
the French Foreign Legion quite early in the 
war. Some Armenians came from the United 
States to fight for France. Only some 250 
have survived, I understand, most of whom 
are proud possessors of the Military Cross. 

Propaganda in neutral countries has 
played an important part during the war. 
The just cause of the Allies has had no 
stauncher supporters or better propagandists 
than the hundred and twenty-five thousand 
or more Armenians in the United States, 
while the Great Tragedy of Armenia has 
incidentally added to the armoury of the. 
Allies a melancholy but formidable moral 
weapon. I 



VII 

ARMENIA THE BATTLE-GROUND OF ASIA MINOR 
AND VICTIM OF CONTENDING EMPIRES 

No country and people have suffered so 
severely from the clash of rival empires, 
both in war and diplomacy, as have Armenia 
and the Armenians, so far as is known to the 
recorded history of the world. Her geogra- 
phical position has made Armenia the cock- 
pit of ambitious empires and conquerors, and 
the highway of their armies in Western Asia, 
much as Belgium and Poland have been the 
battle-grounds of Europe. But whereas in 
these European battle-grounds the invading 
armies have generally moved east and west 
only, Armenia has endured the horrors of 
invasion, time after time, from north, south, 
east and west. Then, again, Armenia being 
a much older country, the record of her 
suffering from the invading armies of her 
stronger neighbours, " hacking their way 



81 



82 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

through her territory, extends over a pro- 
portionately longer period than that of 
Belgium and Poland. Armenia has been 
invaded and ravaged in turn by Baby- 
lonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Hittites, 
Parthians, Macedonians, Persians, Greeks, 
Romans, Arabs, Tartars and Turks. Only 
during the first century B.C. did she succeed 
in subduing all her neighbours, and estab- 
lishing a short-lived empire of her own, 
extending from the Mediterranean to the 
Caspian. 

The analogy between Armenia and her 
European co-sufferers from the ills of aggres- 
sive Imperialism ceases altogether, however, 
when we come to the period of Turkish 
domination. The blood-stained history of 
that regime is well enough known. Periodic 
explosions have reminded Europe of the 
existence of the inferno of unbridled lust, 
corruption and predatory barbarism which 
this unhappy people have been fated to 
endure for centuries. What has not been 
brought into sufficient relief is the fact that 
this " bloody tyranny " could have long since 
been brought to an end, or, at all events, 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 83 

effectively curbed, if it had not been for the 
jealousies and rivalries of the great modern 
Christian empires. The history of the acts 
of European diplomacy in regard to Armenia 
and the Near East during the last sixty or 
seventy years is not one of which the diplo- 
mats and statesmen concerned can be par- 
ticularly proud. Who can claim for them 
to-day to have served, in the sum total of 
their results, either the interests of the 
Christian subjects of the Porte, the progress 
of civilization, the material interests of the 
Great Powers themselves, or the supreme 
interests of peace? 

Mr. Balfour says in his famous Dispatch 
to the British Ambassador to the United 
States that " Turkey has ceased to be a 
bulwark of peace," thereby implying, obvi- 
ously, that Turkey had played that part 
before. Mr. Balfour is a great authority on 
political history, and when he avers that 
Turkey has been a " bulwark of peace " she 
must have filled such a role at some period 
of her history. But to his Christian sub- 
jects, at any rate, the Turk has never brought 
peace. He has brought them fire and sword 



84 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

and a riot of unbridled lust, rapacity, cor- 
ruption and cruelty unparalleled even in 
the Dark Ages. The only peace he has 
brought them has been the peace of death 
and devastation. He has not even left trees 
to break the awful silence of desolation which 
he has spread over this fair and fertile land 
once throbbing with human life and activity. 
That is the price paid for whatever part 
Turkey may have played in the past as a 
bulwark of international peace. Professor 
Valran of the University of Aix- en-Provence 
estimates the Armenian population of Turkey 
in the beginning of the nineteenth century 
at 5,000,000.1 The population of the not too 
healthy island of Java was the same at the 
same period. Under the excellent rule of 
the Dutch, the population of that island 
has grown up to over 35,000,000 during 
the century. What has become of the 
Armenians, one of the most virile and pro- 
lific races of the world living in a healthy 
country? Let the friends and protectors 
of the Turk and his system of government 
give the answer. In particular let those 
answer who, with the Turks' black and 
^ Le Semaphore de Marseille^ November 20, 1915. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 85 

bloodstained record of centuries before them, 
have, nevertheless, the effrontery to maintain, 
at this hour of day, that the Turk has not 
been given a fair chance. The blood of the 
myriads of innocents who have fallen victims 
to the Turks' incurable barbarism through- 
out these centuries, cries aloud against such a 
brazen and deliberate travesty of the truth. 
One of the principal enactments of the 
Treaty of Paris was to admit Turkey into 
the comity of the Great Powers of Europe. 
To-day, after a probation of sixty years, at 
a fearful cost to her Christian subjects, it is 
at last admitted that Turkey has proved 
herself " decidedly foreign to Western civiliza- 
tion." Could there be a more crushing con- 
demnation of the judgment of the statesmen 
responsible for that treaty in regard to the 
Turk? The more one studies the record of 
the Turk, the more one marvels at the un- 
bounded confidence placed in his promises 
of reform by some of the greatest statesmen 
of modern times. In vain have I ransacked 
the history books in search of an instance 
where the Turk carried out, or honestly 
attempted to carry out, a single one of his 
numerous promises of reform. Every one 



86 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

of them was a snare and a pretence designed 
merely to oil the wheels of a cunning diplo- 
macy or tide over a momentary embarrass- 
ment. Whether it was the Sultan or Grand 
Vizier or Ambassador, whenever the Turk 
made a promise to improve the lot of his 
Christian subjects, he had made up his mind 
beforehand that that promise would never 
be performed.^ 

1 I am indebted to my friend Mr. H. N. Mosditchian 
for the following account of an incident which throws 
some light on the ways of the Turk — 

" The massacres of Sassoon in 1893-1894, first 
described at the time by Dr. Dillon in The Daily 
Telegraph, and the first of the series that drenched 
Armenia with the blood of over 200,000 of her sons 
and daughters, raised such a cry of horror and indig- 
nation throughout the civilised world that Great 
Britain, France and Russia, through their Embassies 
at Constantinople, prepared a Scheme of Reforms, 
known as the Scheme of the 11th of May 1895, and 
after much difficulty and long negotiations obtained 
thereto the approval of Abd-ul-Hamid, ' the Red 
Sultan,' 

" I was with the Patriarch when the Hon. M. H. 
Herbert, Secretary to the British Embassy, brought to 
the Patriarchate the good tidings of the Sultan's accept- 
ance of the Scheme. Upon his special advice, the 
Patriarch sent there and then telegraphic instructions 
to all the Armenian Bishoprics in the pro^dnces to 
chant Te Deums in the churches and to offer up 
prayers for the benign and magnanimous Padishah ! 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 87 

Since the beginning of last century Russia 
has been, by reason of her geographical con- 

" I was again with the Patriarch a day or two after 
when telegrams began to pour in from the provinces 
announcing a fresh outbreak of massacres throughout 
the country. I hastened to the Embassies of the Six 
Great Powers to give them the appaUing news and 
to ask for their immediate assistance. As is well 
known, they did or could do nothing, and the massacres 
went on, unchecked and unbridled, assuming every 
day larger dimensions and a better organised thorough- 
ness. ..." 

I called on Judge Terrell, the American Ambassador, 
also. " I am not at all surprised," said he, " at these 
fresh massacres. I knew they would be coming, so 
much so that the moment I heard that the Sultan 
was about to affix his signature to the Scheme of 
Reforms, I hastened to the Grand Vezir and insisted 
upon his sending telegraphic orders to all the Valis 
to take good care that no American subject was hurt. 
The Grand Vezir protested of course that there was 
no necessity for such orders inasmuch as peace and 
security reigned supreme in all the Vilayets, but I 
told him that I knew what was going to happen shortly 
as well as he did, and refused to leave until he had 
despatched the telegrams in my presence." Judge 
Terrell then told me that it had long been known to 
him that the Valis of all the Vilayets had received 
standing orders from the Sultan to massacre the 
Armenians {a) whenever they should discover any 
revolutionary movement among them, (b) whenever 
they should hear of a British, French or Russian 
invasion of Turkish territory, and (c) whenever they 
should hear that the Sultan had agreed to and signed a 
Scheme of Befonns, 



88 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

tiguity, practically the only Power which the 
Turk has really feared. In contrast with the 
near Eastern policies of the Western Powers, 
Russian policy has been almost invariably 
hostile to the Turk since the days of Peter 
the Great. Of course, this was not always 
pure altruism on the part of the rulers of 
Russia. But, whatever the motive, Russian 
policy certainly coincided absolutely with 
the interests of humanity and civilization. 
And while in the West the policy of " but- 
tressing the Turk " (in the words of the 
Bishop of Oxford) often met with strong 
opposition among the democracies of Eng- 
land and France, Russian policy in regard 
to the Turk has always enjoyed the unanim- 
ous support of the Russian people, who being 
the Turk's neighbour and having had several 
wars with him, knew his true nature from 
prolonged personal contact. The one depar- 
ture from Russia's traditional policy was 
Count Lobanoff's regrettable — and I may say 
inexplicable — refusal to take joint action 
with Britain and France to put a term upon 
the butcheries of 1895-96, and adopt such 
effective measures as would perhaps have 
put it beyond the power of the Turk to 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 89 

indulge again in his diabolical orgies of cold- 
blooded barbarism. 

His fear of Russia, which acted as a whole- 
some restraint upon the predatory tenden- 
cies of the Turk, was weakened by the Treaty 
of Paris taking away from Russia her effec- 
tive protectorate over the Christian subjects 
of the Porte, and was removed altogether 
by the Treaty of Berlin and the Cyprus 
Convention. The Turk was quick to under- 
stand that the Western Powers would not 
permit Russia to intervene on behalf of his 
persecuted Christian subjects. He saw that 
conditions were favourable for putting into 
execution his " policy " of getting rid of 
his Christian subjects, and he forthwith set 
to work to carry out his foul project. 

Events have proved the Treaty of Berlin 
to have been the masterpiece of Bismarck's 
policy of " divide et impera." It created, as 
it was designed to create, a deep and bitter 
feeling of mistrust and antagonism between 
Great Britain and Russia, which gave Ger- 
many her chance of gaining a strong foothold 
in the Ottoman Empire. 

The appearance of Germany upon the 
scene created new dangers, which have 



90 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

proved all but fatal to the Armenian 
people. 

The Emperor William II, on his retm^n 
from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, paid 
a visit to, and fraternized with, the murderer 
of 250,000 Armenians who had died for the 
sake of the very Christ from the scene of 
whose life the Christian emperor had just 
returned. This, by the way, was in character- 
istic contrast with King Edward's refusal 
of the Sultan's offer of his portrait about 
the same time. This act of the great and 
humane English king has touched the hearts 
of Armenians, who cherish a deep and 
reverent affection for his memory. 

The result of the Emperor William's visit 
to Abdul Hamid was the Baghdad Railway 
and many other concessions, and no doubt 
a great scheme of a future Germano-Turkish 
Empire in the East. 

I believe it was Dr. Paul Rohrbach, the 
well-known German writer on Near Eastern 
affairs, who suggested some years ago that 
the deportation of the Armenians from their 
homes and their settlement in agricultural 
colonies along the Baghdad Railway would 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 91 

be the best way to make that Hne pay quick 
and handsome dividends. 

Some time ago I read in The Near East 
the account of a conversation between an 
American missionary and a German officer 
travelhng together in AnatoHa. The Ger- 
man officer confessed that what he had seen 
was horrible, more horrible than anything 
he had ever seen before; " but," he added, 
" what could we do ? The Armenians were 
in the way of our military aims.^^ Supposing 
that resistance to massacre by Armenian 
men was interpreted by the German agents 
in Turkey as being " in the way of their 
military aims," what possible excuse could 
there be for the abominable treatment, the 
torture, the slaughter, and the driving to 
misery and death of hundreds of thousands 
of women and children ? Were they also in 
the way of their military aims ? 

While the Turks were butchering Chris- 
tians in their hundreds of thousands, the 
German Emperor was presenting a sword of 
honour to the Sultan of Turkey and shower- 
ing honours upon Enver Pasha at his head- 
quarters. While thousands of Christian 



92 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

children and women were being mercilessly 
slaughtered and driven to death by Ger- 
many's ally, and their bodies thrown to the 
wolves and vultures in the Mesopotamian 
deserts, the German Government was making 
provision for the housing and tuition of 
thousands of Turkish youths in the techni- 
cal schools of Germany to fill the places of 
the "eliminated" Armenians. What have 
Christian Germans to say to all this ? Do 
the Johanniter Knights, of whom the Kaiser 
is himself Grand Master, approve of these 
proceedings ? Do they think that He who 
said " inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
of these little ones, ye have done it unto Me " 
knows of any distinction of race ? How can 
German Christians, from their rulers down- 
wards, face God and the Son of God in the 
intimacy of their prayers after sanctioning 
these black deeds which are the very negation 
of God and the teaching of Christ ? Do the 
rulers of Germany and Turkey and the pro- 
tagonists of the Reventlow doctrine believe 
that empires, railways, or any other schemes 
of expansion, built upon foundations of the 
blood and tears of hundreds of thousands of 
human beings, will endure and prosper and 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 93 

bring forth harvests of plenty and peace 
and happiness to their promoters, their 
children, and their children's children ? They 
are mistaken. My word may count for 
naught to the rulers and leaders of mighty 
states; but it is true. We are an ancient 
people. " We have seen empires come and 
empires go." We have been ground for 
centuries in the mill of the ruthless clash of 
contending empires ; but in spite of our long 
and bitter sufferings our belief to-day is 
as strong as ever in the existence of another 
mill, the mill of Divine Justice, which grinds 
in its own good time, and may grind slow, 
but " it grinds exceeding small." Who will 
doubt or deny that violence to women and 
children and unoffending, defenceless men, 
" every hair of whose head is numbered," 
will not be forgiven by their just and Almighty 
Creator; that the sacrifice of them for 
ulterior selfish objects will not be overlooked ? 
Political and military acts of the mightiest 
empires, entailing injustice, violence and 
suffering to weaker peoples will bring Nemesis 
in their train in due course. The idol with 
feet of clay, sunk in the blood of innocents, 
cannot endure. Sooner or later it must fall. 



VIII 

THE BLUE-BOOK— THE EPIC OF ARMENIA'S 
MAHTYRDOM, THE REVELATION OF HER 
SPIRIT AND CHARACTER—'' TRUTH " ON 
THE ARMENIANS : A DIGRESSION 

To realize, even approximately, the un- 
imaginable barbarities that have been 
committed by the Turks during the Great 
Armenian Tragedy of 1915, it is necessary 
to read the Blue-book itself. But the Blue- 
book is a bulky volume, and the average 
man or woman has so many calls on his or 
her attention in these stirring and momen- 
tous times, that I fear it will not be read 
as widely as it deserves to be read in the 
interests of humanity, Christianity, and 
civilization. I have, therefore, thought it 
desirable to quote a number of extracts 
which will give the reader some idea of the 
nature and magnitude of the horrors 
chronicled in that fearful epic of a nation's 

94 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 95 

martyrdom, in the hope that they may 
thereby reach a wider circle of the pubhc. 

Apart from giving the reader a general 
idea of the atrocities themselves, I have 
selected and grouped the extracts with the 
object of calling attention to the incidental 
or subsidiary morals and lessons they convey, 
which have received little or no notice in 
the Press reviews. The Blue-book reveals 
the spirit, the character and the ideals 
which lay hidden under the unattractive 
outside appearance of the Armenians, upon 
which has been based their mostly superficial 
judgment of them by European travellers. 
Often under the influence of a sense of 
indebtedness for an escort of Zaptiehs 
" graciously placed at their disposal by a 
kindly vali " (in whose harem were prob- 
ably languishing a dozen or more enslaved 
women), they have seldom paused to under- 
stand the tragedy of the dour, subdued, 
anxious mien of the Armenian peasant 
seen trudging wearily along in the high- 
ways and byways of Asia Minor. They 
little realized that the Armenian lived under 
the strain of constant terrorism: that he 



96 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

never knew when the honour of his wife 
or sister might be violently assaulted; when 
he might be stabbed in the back; when his 
cattle might be driven away or his crops 
burned or stolen. He was afraid even of 
a too attractive personal appearance, lest 
he should excite the cupidity and jealousy 
of his Turkish neighbour. If he fell upon 
his persecutor and slew him in defence of 
the honour of his womenfolk, it meant the 
wiping out not only of his family but of his 
whole village. His own government was 
his deadly enemy, bent upon his destruction. 
This has been the tragedy of the Armenian's 
life for generations. It has been little known 
in the West because Armenia is a long wayf 
off, and few European travellers have stopped 
to look below the surface. He has lived 
with the yatagan hanging over his head, 
like the sword of Damocles, from birth to 
death. Virile, industrious, patient, long- 
suffering, but never despondent, he has 
clung to his faith, his soil, his ancient culture, 
his nationality and ideals of civilization 
with a tenacity that centuries of " bloody 
tyranny " have tended only to steel more 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 97 

and more. That he has succeeded in pre- 
serving the ideals which have cost his 
nation such heartbreaking sacrifices is abun- 
dantly proved by the Blue-book. Here 
is one evidence : " Mr. Yarrow, seeing all 
this, said, ' I am amazed at the self-control 
of the Armenians, for though the Turks 
did not spare a single wounded Armenian, 
the Armenians are helping us to save the 
Turks ' " (p. 70). 

But of all the tales of calm, dignified 
heroism in face of death recorded in the 
Blue-book, W. Effendi's letter (p. 133, and 
504 of the Blue-book) written on the eve 
of his, his young wife's and infant child's 
deportation to what he knew to be certain 
death, will ever stand out as an impressive 
example of the noblest heroism, the highest 
conception of the teaching of Christ and 
a complete triumph of the spirit, unsurpassed 
in the annals of Christian martyrdom. 
" May God forgive this nation all their sin 
which they do without knowing," wrote 
this true follower of Christ, while he was 
making ready for his and his loved ones' 
journey to sorrow and death. It recalls 



98 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the story of St. Stephen's martyrdom. 
W. Effendi's letter and Nm^se Cavell's im- 
mortal words, " patriotism is not enough," 
strike me as the two most remarkable 
utterances delivered spontaneously by heroic 
spirits in proof of the bankruptcy of the 
" f rightfulness " to which they were on the 
point of falling victims. 

There was a short notice in Truth of 
January 31, 1917, in connection with Ar- 
menia Day which contained the following 
remark : " Some people despise these 
' eleventh Allies ' as a mercenary race, but 
others, like Mr. Noel Buxton, depict them 
in a much more attractive light." 

With the reader's indulgence I will digress 
for a moment to deal briefly with this totally 
unjustified stigma cast wantonly upon the 
character of a sorely tried nation. 

In the unoffensive sense of the word the 
whole human family may be called " mer- 
cenary." I have not met or heard of a race of 
men in any of the explored parts of the earth, 
whatever their colour, creed, or degree of 
civiHzation, who had any conscientious ob- 
jection to the acquiring of as much money 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 99 

as they could acquire by legitimate and 
honourable means. I do not suppose Truth 
itself is dispensing its very helpful " Rubber 
tips " week by week solely for the good of 
humanity. But if it is asserted that the 
Armenian race puts the love of gold before 
everything else in Hfe, such an assertion 
at this juncture is a particularly ill-timed, 
offensive and unworthy aspersion. A mer- 
cenary race, forsooth ! If the Armenian 
race had valued gold above its loyalty to 
its faith and nationahty ; if it had attached 
greater value to material prosperity than 
to spiritual ideals and principles, it would 
have accepted Islam centuries ago— Heaven 
knows the temptation was great— and won 
a predominant position for itself in Asia 
Minor. It would be counted to-day not by 
two or three, but by twenty or thirty mil- 
lions. But under the longest and bloodiest 
pressure endured by any people in history, 
culminating almost in its extermination, it 
refused to sell its soul. 

Thousands of Armenians could have saved 
'their Hves by feigning to accept Islam, but, 
with few exceptions, they refused to commit 



100 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

even that measure of spiritual dishonesty, 
which would perhaps not have been con- 
sidered unpardonable under the circum- 
stances. There is scarcely any instance of 
an Armenian woman trafficking her honour | 
for money; which is, perhaps, the most 
eloquent refutation of the calumny. 

What good object has Truth served by 
giving currency in its columns to this libelf 
against an oppressed people, almost wiped 
out because of its Christian faith and its 
sympathy for and support of the Allied 
cause? Even if there were the remotest 
justification for it one would have thought 
that Truth would have shrunk, at this dark 
and bitter hour, from adding insult to the 
agony of a people plunged into sorrow and, 
mourning for the loss of half its number. I 
But the assertion that the Armenians are 
a mercenary race is not true. It is part 
of the propaganda carried on by a very few 
people who are either blinded by unreasoning 
prejudice, or have some special purpose to 
serve, or beheve that they are discharging 
some kind of duty by whitewashing the 
Turk and blackening the Armenian. 1 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 101 

believe that these admirers of the votaries 
of " bloody tyranny " on the Bosphorus 
are very few indeed in this country. Who- 
ever they are and whatever their motives, 
conscious of my obligations to the generous 
hospitality of this country — for which I can- 
not be too grateful — but taking my stand 
on the broader ground of Humanity, I wish 
to say to them, " Though you are in Great 
Britain, you are not of it ; though this great, 
humane and Christian country may be your 
physical home by accident of birth, you will 
find your congenial ' spiritual home ' in the 
offices of Count Reventlow and the Tanine, 
Charity, after all, is a matter between a 
man and his conscience and his God. If 
you cannot give your money to a starving 
woman or child without massacring them 
morally, while the Turk is taking their life, 
pray spare your money and let the Armenian 
die; it will please the Turk and his allies. 
Perhaps it would be more in harmony with 
your sentiments and political faith to lend 
your money to your friend the Turk. When 
the war is over he may need a fresh supply 
of arms, for even the tender limbs of the 



102 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

countless women and children on whom he 
has practised his ' chivalry ' may well have 
blunted and worn his old stock." 

There are mercenary Armenian individuals 
as there are mercenary persons in every 
nation. It may be that, debarred from 
government posts except when he was indis- 
pensable, the town Armenian in Turkey, 
like the Greek and Syrian, has been com- 
pelled to direct his energies into commercial 
channels in a larger proportion than free 
and independent nations. Naturally, also, 
through generations of ruthless persecution, 
the Armenian nation has thrown up a flotsam 
and jetsam of indigents wandering far and 
wide in search of security and the means 
of earning a living. But to brand the 
whole Armenian race as " mercenary " is 
malevolent nonsense, or credulity due to 
a total ignorance of the facts. Seventy or 
eighty per cent, of the Armenians in Turkish 
as well as Russian Armenia are peasants, 
farmers and artisans. That is approximately i 
true also of the Persian Armenians. Even 
in the United States the majority of the 
immigrants have taken to fruit-growing 
in California. Armenians who have the 



ARMENIA AND 1 IE WAR 103 

means to give their sons i good education 
almost invariably make tl em follow a pro- 
fession in preference to cor merce, as witness 
the number of Armenian university pro- 
fessors, doctors, lawyers and some artists 
and painters of considerable merit in the 
United States. ^ Probably no people have 
made the sacrifices made by Armenians, 
in proportion to their means, for the relief 
of distress during the war. There have 
been a few exceptions among the very rich 
whose moral sense has been blunted by 
luxury and self-indulgence. They can be 
counted on the fingers of one hand. They 
belong to that class of cosmopolitan financiers 
and traders who are no more thrilled by the 
music of their country's or any country's 
name; who are unmoved by the cry of 
starving women and children of their own 
or any race; whose home is the world and 

^ Visitors to the San Francisco Exhibition will have 
seen and admired the work of the Armenian sculptor 
Haik Partigian, whose exhibits, I am told by one who 
saw them, were among the best, if not the best, of all 
the exhibits in the Sculpture Section. Russia's great 
marine painter Aivazovsky was an Armenian. The 
recently instituted Society of Armenian Artists is hold- 
ing its first exhibition in Tiflis at the time of writing. 



104 ARMENI AND THE WAR 

whose god is god; who are no more the 
masters but the slaves of money. But 
this, again, is n t pecuHar to Armenians; 
very far from it. It is a fraternity that 
embraces members of every, or almost every, 
race ; and Armenians are barely represented 
upon it. It is palpably misleading as it 
is inaccurate to assert that these represent 
the Armenian nation. In fact, as far as 
my knowledge goes, the masses of the 
Armenian people are ashamed of them, 
because their worship of gold and vanity 
are alien to the national spirit, and bring 
discredit upon the nation. For generations 
Armenian educational and religious institu- 
tions have been maintained by voluntary 
grants; and I do not know that any Euro- 
pean citizen bears a heavier burden for the 
needs of his nation than does the individual 
Armenian. 

It must not be supposed from what I 
have said that all, or the majority, of rich 
Armenians have been deaf or indifferent 
to their country's need. That would be a 
mistake and an injustice. On the whole 
their response to the call of their afflicted 
country has been satisfactory, considering 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 105 

that they had obligations to the belHgerent 
countries to which they owed allegiance. 
I know of one contribution of £30,000,^ while 
ten Moscow merchants raised a million 
roubles between them for their nation's 
needs. A prominent Armenian physician 
has relinquished a large and remunerative 
practice at Petrograd to superintend per- 
sonally the administration of an orphanage 
at Erzerum, which he has opened on his 
own private account. The Catholicos's 
palace at Etchmiadzin was converted into 
a hospital for refugees in the early months 
of 1915. Almost every Armenian peasant 
family in the Caucasus have housed and 
cared for one or more refugees in their 
humble cottages ever since the influx of 
their distressed kinsmen from the other side 
of the frontier in the spring and summer 
of 1915. I have not marshalled these facts 
in a spirit of flaunting the virtues of my 
race — we certainly hold no monopoly of all 

^ It was reported in the Tiflis papers, after the above 
was written, that Mr. Mantashian, the Baku oil king, 
has made a further donation of £60,000 for agricultural 
improvements, and offered thirty thoroughbreds to 
improve the breed of horses in Armenia. 



106 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the virtues, or indeed of all the vices, to 
which human nature is heir — but I know 
of no better way to disprove the base- 
less aspersions assiduously disseminated by 
some interested people for purposes of pro- 
Turkish propaganda and accepted by the 
credulous as true. 

Lord Bryce has known the Armenian 
people longer and more intimately than 
any eminent European statesman, historian 
and diplomatist has ever done before, and 
his dictum will no doubt be generally ac- 
cepted as that of a great and final authority. 
I therefore make no apology for quoting 
his lordship's most recent utterance on the 
subject reported in the Journal of the Royal 
Society of Arts, February 2, 1917 — 

" Having known a very large number of 
Armenians, he had been greatly struck, not 
only with their high level of intelligence 
and industry, but also by their intense 
patriotism. He did not know of any people 
who had shown greater constancy, patience 
and patriotism under difficulties and suffer- 
ings than the Armenians. He personally 
had always found them perfectly loyal. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 107 

He had frequently had occasion to give 
them confidential advice and to trust them 
with secrets, and never on any occasion had 
he found that confidence misplaced. . . . 
As a proof of their loyalty and devotion to 
their country he might mention that the 
Armenians living in America had contributed 
sums enormous in proportion to their number 
and resources, for they were nearly all persons 
of small means, for the relief of the refugees 
who had been driven out by the Turkish 
massacres. No people during the war had 
done more in proportion to their capacities 
than the Armenians had done for the relief 
of their suffering fellow-countrymen. A 
large number of them were also fighting as 
volunteers in the armies of France, where 
they had displayed the utmost courage and 
valour in the combats before Verdun." 

To return to the extracts from the Blue- 
book. Group '*A" affords a melancholy 
abundance of indisputable evidence that 
it was not Kurds and brigands alone who 
did Satan's work in Armenia, but that 
the chief culprits were Turkish officials, 
high and low, officers, soldiers, gendarmes 



108 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



II 



and rabble; even a member of parliament 
took a turn ! They not only played the 
principal part in the vast and revolting 
carnival of blood, lust and savagery, but 
they took a delight and pride in the part 
they played, and laughed at the sufferings 
and tortures of their victims.^ 

Group '' B " bears evidence of a heroism 
and fidelity in torture and death, to faith, 
honour and the ideal of nationality, unsur- 
passed in the history of mankind, which 
must redound to the eternal glory of Chris- 
tianity and to the honour of the Armenian 
name. I respectfully suggest for con- 
sideration by the Heads of the Christian 
Churches that a day should be fixed to 

^ Some of the most distressing and disgraceful cases 
of Tm-kish bestiality appeared in Doctor (Major) 
Aspland's report on the hospital at Van, which was 
mider his charge as representative of the Lord 
Mayor's Armenian Relief Fund. Describing some of 
the individual cases brought to him for treatment, 
Dr. Aspland says — 

" Here is a young woman leaving hospital to-day, 
who was raped by eight Kurds. She has suffered for 
months, and even now, in spite of operations, will be 
crippled for the rest of her life. Here is a small girl 
aged five, similarly treated by Turks, and is now 
lying in plaster of Paris in order to recover from injury 
to the hip joint." — {Ararat, October 1916, p. 172.) 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 109 

commemorate annually the martyrdom of 
this vast number of Armenian Christians. 

Group '*C" contains proofs of the con- 
duct of insurgent Armenians in the unequal 
struggles for self-defence, and it should be 
remembered that these are but a few in- 
stances, mainly of what was seen or heard 
of by foreigners. The ruined towns and 
villages, the silent fields and highways of 
this land of blood and tears, what secrets of 
desperate heroism in defence of wife and 
child, mother and sister, these guard will 
probably never be known. Group '' C " 
also contains evidence of the fact that 
the Turks had to employ considerable 
bodies of troops to overcome the desperate 
resistance of Armenians in many places, 
such as Moush, Sassoon, Van, etc. A third 
feature in this group is, that the Turks 
attributed their defeats in the Caucasus to 
the Armenians.^ 

Taken together, these extracts, and the 
Blue-book from which they are taken, form 
a better mirror of the characteristics of the 
two races than all that has been written 

^ Compare this with the diary of a Turkish officer, 
reported in the Busskaia Viedomosti (p. 75). 



110 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



on the subject for a century. They show 
the radical dissimilarit}^ of then- natures, 
and the vast difference between the respec- 
tive stages of civihzation in which the two 
races find themselves. 

Was it Buddha or Confucius who said 
that the principal difference between man 
and the rest of the animal world is, that 
man possesses the feeling of pity for the pain 
and suffering of his fellow-men or animals ? 
What would they think of this strange race 
of human beings who delight in torture and 
murder, sparing neither sex nor age, nor even 
unborn babes and their mothers ; who inflict 
pain and jeer at their victims ? 

I remember reading in one of Mr. Lloyd 
George's speeches not long ago : " It is not 
the trials one has to go through in life, but 
the way one faces them that matters," or 
words to that effect. This is as true of 
nations as it is of individuals. " In the 
reproof of chance lies the true proof of men," 
and of nations. How has the Armenian 
nation conducted itself in this great upheaval 
and borne the terrible ordeal revealed by 
the Blue-book : an ordeal the horror and 
magnitude of which it is absolutely beyond 



^ 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 111 

the power of the human mind to imagine ? 
The Blue-book itself furnishes the answer. 
From the first day of the war, Armenians 
in all countries understood the nature of 
the issues involved. They had no doubt 
on which side lay their sympathies, which 
were never influenced by the varying fortunes 
of the war. They were exposed to grave 
risks and paid a terrible price. Could there 
be a better proof of intellectual rectitude 
and the sincerity of sentiment? This, I 
trust, will silence for ever the dastardly 
reflections often cast upon the honesty of 
the Armenian people. There are some dis- 
honest Armenians as there are some dishonest 
men in all nations. But, whether through 
prejudice, malice, or ignorance of the facts, 
to brand as dishonest a whole people who 
have been on the Cross for half a millen- 
nium for their religion and patriotism, is 
unworthy of civilized and right-minded men. 
There are two other important facts which 
the Blue-book establishes beyond dispute. 
There was no revolt. Indeed, it would have 
been sheer madness on the part of the Ar- 
menians to attempt a rising when their able- 
bodied manhood was with the colours. The 



112 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

second fact the Blue-book reveals is, that 
the Armenian party leaders did their utmost 
to dissuade the Young Turks from joining 
the war. When the veil of war has lifted, 
and Europe comes to know more of what 
took place behind the scenes in Constanti- 
nople prior to Turkey's entry into the war, 
it will be seen how near the personal influence 
and eloquence of the Armenian deputy 
Zohrab came to turning the scale against 
the fateful and suicidal decision. This 
brilliant young jurist, an intimate personal 
friend of Enver and Talaat who sought his 
advice almost daily, was murdered by their 
orders on the way to Diyarbekir. Armenians 
have been charged with a lack of political 
aptitude as well as with treachery to the 
Ottoman Empire. I would specially call 
the attention of those who hold these views 
— Europeans, Moslems, and thinking Turks 
themselves — to the fact that, at a time 
of crisis, it was the Armenians who saw 
clearly the path of safety for the empire, 
and showed their loyalty to it, in spite of 
all they had suffered in the past, by their 
councils of prudence to which the Young 
Turks lent a deaf ear. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR lis 

While on the subject of the Blue-book, 

I cannot refrain from saying that I noted 

with profound regret the distinction that 

^ was evidently made, in many cases, between 

Cathohc and Protestant Armenians on the 

one hand, and Gregorians on the other, in 

the efforts that were made to save them from 

massacre or deportation. It is no secret that 

' His Hohness the Pope and President Wilson 

intervened through their representatives in 

Constantinople, and possibly in BerHn and 

Vienna, to stop the massacres. I record this 

fact with the deepest gratitude. Of course 

no such distinction can possibly have been 

made by the Pope or President Wilson, or 

their ambassadors; it was probably due to 

the well-meant activities of subordinates or 

of local European or American residents. 

No doubt it was better to save Catholics 
and Protestants than none at all, but the 
very idea of any distinction being thought 
of, under such fateful circumstances, is ob- 
viously contrary to the spirit of Christianity, 
and the passages referring to it make sad 
reading to a Christian. 



IX 

EXTRACTS FROM THE BLUE-BOOK 

Group A 

" The Archbishop of Erzeroum, His Grace 
Sempad, who, with the Vah's authorization, 
was returning to Constantinople, was mur- 
dered at Erzindjan by the brigands in the 
service of the Union and Progress Committee. 
The bishops of Trebizond, Kaisaria, Moush, 
BitHs, Sairt, and Erzindjan have all been 
murdered by order of the Young Turk 
Government " (p. 23). 

" The shortest method for disposing of 
the women and children concentrated in 
the various camps was to burn them. Fire 
was set to large wooden sheds in Alidjan, 
Megrakom, Khaskegh, and other Armenian 
villages, and these absolutely helpless women 
and children were roasted to death. . . . 
And the executioners, who seem to have 
been unmoved by this unparalleled savagery, 

114 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 115 

grasped infants by one leg and hurled them 
into the fire, calling out to the burning 
mothers : ' Here are your lions ' " (p. 86). 

" The Turks boasted of having now got 
rid of all the Armenians. I heard it from 
the officers myself, how they revelled in 
thought that the Armenians had been got 
rid of " (p. 88). 

" It was heartrending to hear the cries 
of the people and children who were being 
burnt to death in their houses. The soldiers 
took great delight in hearing them, and when 
people who were out in the streets during 
the bombardment fell dead the soldiers 
merely laughed at them " (p. 90). 

" Every officer boasted of the number he 
had personally massacred as his share in 
ridding Turkey of the Armenian race " (p. 90). 

" Mehmed Effendi, the Ottoman deputy 
for Gendje (Ginj), collected about forty 
women and children and killed them " (p. 94). 

" Of the other children, a girl was taken 
away and only escaped many months later 
when the Russians came. Very reluctantly 



116 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

she poured out her story to the Stapletons, 
from which it appeared that she had been 
handed round to ten officers after the murder 
of her husband and his mother, to be their 
sport " (p. 225). 

" ' See what care the Government is 
taking of the Armenians,' the Vah said, 
and she returned home surprised and 
pleased ; but when she visited the Orphanage 
again several days later, there were only 
thirteen of the 700 children left — ^the rest 
had disappeared. They had been taken, 
she learnt, to a lake six hours' journey by 
road from the town and drowned " (p. 260). 

" Sister D. A. was told, at Constantinople, 
that Turks of all parties were united in their 
approval of what was being done to the 
Armenians, and that Enver Pasha openly 
boasted of it as his personal achievement. 
Talaat Bey, too, was reported to have 
remarked, on receiving news of Vartkes's ^ 

^ Mr. Vartkes was an Armenian deputy in the Otto- 
man Parliament, who was murdered, together with 
another deputy, Mr. Zohrab, when he was being escorted 
by gendarmes from Aleppo to be court-martialled at 
Diyarbekir (see Documents 7 and 9). — Editor. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 117 

assassination : ' There is no room in the 
Empire for both Armenians and Turks. 
Either they had to go or we " (p. 261). 

" A crowd of Turkish women and children 
follow the police about like a lot of vultures, 
and seize anything they can lay their hands 
on, and when the more valuable things are 
carried out of a house by the police, they 
rush in and take the balance. I see this 
performance every day with my own eyes " 
(p. 289). 

" It was a real extermination and slaughter 
of the innocents, an unheard-of thing, a 
black page stained with the flagrant violation 
of the most sacred rights of humanity, of 
Christianity, of nationality " (p. 291). 

" When the Governor was petitioned to 
allow the infants to be entrusted to charitable 
Moslem families, to save them from dying 
on the Journey, he replied : * I will not leave 
here so much as the odour of the Armenians ; 
go away into the deserts of Arabia and dump 
your Armenia there ' " (p. 328). 

''P. P., the college blacksmith, was so 
terribly beaten that a month later he was 



118 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

still unable to walk. Another was shod 
with horse-shoes. At Y., Mr. A. D. (brother- 
in-law of the pastor, A. E., who suffered 
martyrdom at Sivas twenty-one years ago) 
had his finger-nails torn out for refusing 
to accept Islam. ' How,' he had answered, 
' can I abandon the Christ whom I have 
preached for twenty-years ? ' " (P. 378.) 

" In Angora I learned that the tanners 
and the butchers of the city had been called 
to Asi Yozgad, and the Armenians committed 
to them for murder. The tanner's knife is 
a circular affair, while the butcher's knife 
is a small axe, and they killed people by 
using the instruments which they knew 
best how to use " (p. 385.) 

" The Ottoman Bank President showed 
bank-notes soaked with blood and struck 
through with daggers with the blot round 
the hole, and some torn that had evidently 
been ripped from the clothing of people who 
had been killed — and these were placed on 
ordinary desposit in the bank by Turkish 
Officers " (p. 386). 

" One girl had hanged herself on the way; 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 119 

others had poison with them. Mothers were 
holding out their beautiful babies and begging 
the missionaries to take them " (p. 403). 

" What was the meaning of all this ? It 
was the deathblow aimed at Christianity 
in Turkey, or, in other words, the exter- 
mination of the Armenian people — ^their 
extermination or amalgamation " (p. 404). 

" During the weary days of travel I had 
as my companion a Turkish captain, who, 
as the hours dragged by, came to look on 
me with less of suspicion, growing quite 
friendly at times. Arrived at the cap- 
tain went out among the Armenian crowd 
and soon returned with an Armenian girl of 
about fifteen years. She was forced into a 
compartment of an adjoining railway coach, 
in company with a Turkish woman. When 
she saw that her mother was not allowed 
to accompany her, she began to realize 
something of the import of it all. She grew 
frantic in her efforts to escape, scratching 
at the window, begging, screaming, tearing 
her hair and wringing her hands, while the 
equally grief-crazed mother stood on the 



120 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

railway platform, helpless in her effort to 
save her daughter. The captain, seeing 
the unconcealed disapproval in my face, 
came up and said : ' I suppose, Effendi, 
you don't approve of such things, but let 
me tell you how it is. Why, this girl is 
fortunate. I'll take her home with me, 
raise her as a Moslem servant in my house. 
She will be well cared for and saved from a 
worse fate — besides that, I even gave the 
mother a lira gold piece for the girl.' And, 
as though that were not convincing enough, 
he added : ' Why, these scoundrels have 
killed two of our Moslems right here in this 
city, within the last few days,' as though 
that were excuse enough, if excuse were 
needed, for annihilating the whole Armenian 
race. I could not refrain from giving him 
my version of the rotten, diabolical scheme, 
which, however, fell from his back like 
water " (p. 410). 

" I learned here, too, of a nurse who had 
been in one of the mission hospitals, who 
two days before my arrival there had become 
almost crazed by the fear of falling into the 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 121 

hands of the human fiends, and had ended 
her Hfe with poison. Were these isolated 
or unusual instances, it would excite no 
comment in this year of unusual things, 
but when we know of these things going on 
all over the empire, repeated in thousands 
of instances, we begin to realize the enormity 
of the crimes committed. I spoke again 
to the captain : ' Why are you taking such 
brutal measures to accomplish your aim? 
Why not accept the offer of a friendly 
nation, which offers to pay transportation 
if you will send these people out of the 
country to a place of safety ? ' He replied ; 
' Why, don't you understand, we don't 
want to have to repeat this thing again 
after a few years? It's hot down in the 
deserts of Arabia, and there is no water, 
and these people can't stand a hot climate, 
don't you see ? ' Yes, I saw. Any one could 
see what would happen to most of them, 
long before Arabia was reached " (p. 411). 

** Crowds of Turkish women were going 
about insolently prying into house after house 
to find valuable rugs or other articles " (p. 411). 



122 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

" The nation is being systematically done 
to death by a cruel and crafty method, and 
their extermination is only a question of 
time " (p. 482). 

" Women with little children in their 
arms, or in the last days of pregnancy, were 
driven along under the whip like cattle. 
Three different cases came under my know- 
ledge where the woman was delivered on the 
road, and because her brutal driver hurried 
her along, she died of haemorrhage " (p. 472). 

'' I saw one young woman drop down 
exhausted. The Turk gave her two or 
three blows with his stick and she raised 
herself painfully " (p. 484). 

'' I saw two women, one of them old, the 
other very young and very pretty, carrying 
the corpse of another young woman; I 
had scarcely passed them when cries of 
terror arose. The girl was struggling in the 
clutches of a brute who was trying to drag 
her away. The corpse had fallen to the 
ground, the girl, now half-unconscious, was 
writhing by the side of it, the old woman was 
sobbing and wringing her hands " (p. 564). 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 128 

" Sixteen hundred Armenians have had 
their throats cut in the prisons of Diyar- 
bekir. The Arashnort (bishop) was mutilated, 
drenched with alcohol, and burnt alive in the 
prison yard, in the middle of a carousing crowd 
of gendarmes, who even accompanied the 
scene with music. The massacres at Benia, 
Adiaman, the Selefka have been carried out 
deliberately; there is not a single male left 
above the age of IS years ; the girls have been 
outraged mercilessly; we have seen their 
mutilated corpses tied together in batches 
of four, eight, or ten, and cast into the 
Euphrates. The majority had been muti- 
lated in an indescribable manner " (p. 21). 

" Five hundred young men were shot out- 
side the town without any formality. During 
the following two days the same process was 
carried out with heartless and cold-blooded 
thoroughness in the eighty Armenian villages 
of Ardjish, Adiljevas, and the rest of the 
district north of Lake Van. In this manner 
some 24,000 Armenians were killed in three 
days, their young women carried away and 
their homes looted " (p. 73). 



124 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

" According to Turkish Government sta- 
tistics 120,000 Armenians were killed in this 
district " (p. 95). 

" The immense procession, sinking under 
its agony and fatigue, forces itself along 
and moves forward without respite. . . . 
No pen can describe what this tragic pro- 
cession has endured, or what experiences 
it has lived through, on its interminable 
road. The least detail of them makes the 
human heart quail, and draws an unquench- 
able stream of bitter tears from one's 
eyes. . . . Each fraction of the long pro- 
cession has its individual history, its especial 
pangs. . . . Here is a mother with her six 
children, one on her back, the second clasped 
to her breast; the third falls down on the 
road, and cries and wails because it cannot 
drag itself further. The three others begin 
to wail in sympathy, and the poor mother 
stands stock still, tearless, like a statue, 
utterly powerless to help " (p. 197). 

*' Babies were shot in their mothers' arms, 
small children were horribly mutilated, 
women were stripped and beaten. The 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 126 

villages were not prepared for attack ; many 
made no resistance; others resisted until 
their ammunition gave out " (p. 36). 

" A little bride and a slim young girl 
sidled up to our wagon to talk. In reply 
to our talk they told us that they were ' busy 
taking care of the babies.' We asked what 
babies, and they said : ' Oh, those the effendis 
stop here ; the mothers nurse them and then 
go.' We asked if there were many, and 
were told that every house was full. We 
were watched too closely to make calls 
possible. Afterwards we found an officer 
ready to talk, who said : ' We take them off 
after a while and kill them. What can we 
do? The mothers cannot take them, and 
the Government cannot take care of them 
for ever ' " (p. 359). 

" This frightful suffering inspires no pity 
in the ruthless officials, who throw them- 
selves upon their wretched victims, armed 
with whips and cudgels, without distinction 
of sex or age " (p. 414). 



126 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Group B 

" Many Armenian women preferred to 
throw themselves into the Euphrates with 
their infants, or committed suicide in their 
homes. The Euphrates and Tigris have 
become the sepulchre of thousands of 
Armenians " (p. 14). 

" While the Armenian refugees had been 
mutually helpful and self-sacrificing, these 
Moslems showed themselves absolutely sel- 
fish, callous and indifferent to each other's 
suffering " (p. 42). 

" Many went mad and threw their children 
away; some knelt down and prayed amid 
the flames in which their bodies were burn- 
ing; others shrieked and cried for help 
which came from nowhere " (p. 86). 

" Several young women, who were in 
danger of falling into the Turks' hands, 
threw themselves from the rocks, some of 
them with their infants in their arms " 

(p. 87). 

" Among the massacred were two monks, 
one of them being the Father Superior of 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 127 

Sourp Garabed, Yeghishe Vartabed, who had 
a chance of escaping, but did not wish to 
be separated from his flock, and was killed 
with them " (p. 96). 

" In some cases safety was bought by 
professing Mohammedanism, but many died 
as martyrs to the faith " (p. 102). 

" The mother resisted, and was thrown 
over a bridge by one of the Turks. The 
poor woman broke her arm, but her mule- 
driver dragged her up again. Again the 
same Turks threw her down, with one of 
her daughters, from the top of the moun- 
tain. The moment the married daughter 
saw her mother and sister thrown down, 
she thrust the baby in her arms upon 
another woman, ran after them, crying, 
' Mother, mother ! ' and threw herself down 
the same precipice " (p. 274). 

" Sirpouhi and Santukht, two young 
women of Ketcheurd, a village east of 
Sivas, who were being led off to the harem, 
by Turks, threw themselves into the river 
Halys, and were drowned with their infants 
in their arms. Mile. Sirpouhi, the nineteen- 



128 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

year-old daughter of Garabed Tufenjjian of 
Herag, a graduate of the American College 
of Marsovan, was offered the choice of saving 
herself by embracing Islam and marrying a 
Turk. Sirpouhi retorted that it was an 
outrage to murder her father and then 
make her a proposal of marriage. She 
would have nothing to do with a godless 
and a murderous people ; whereupon she, 
and seventeen other Armenian girls who 
had refused conversion, were shamefully ill- 
treated and afterwards killed near Tchamli- 
Bel gorge " (p. 325). 

" Many began to doubt even the exist- 
ence of God. Under the severe strain many 
individuals became demented, some of them 
permanently. There were also some examples 
of the greatest heroism and faith, and some 
started out on the journey courageously and 
calmly, saying in farewell : ' Pray for us. 
We shall not see you again in this world, but 
some time we shall meet again ' " (p. 335). 



<c ( 



No, I cannot see what you see, and I 
cannot accept what I cannot understand.' 
So the ox-carts came to the door and took 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 129 

the family away. The wife was a dehcate 
lady and the two beautiful daughters well 
educated. They were offered homes in 
harems, but said : ' No, we cannot deny 
our Lord. We will go with our father ' " 
(p. 354). 

" In a mountain village there was a girl 
who made herself famous. Here, as every- 
where else, the men were taken out at 
night and pitifully killed. Then the women 
and children were sent in a crowd, but a 
large number of young girls and brides 
were kept behind. This girl, who had 
been a pupil in the school at X., was sent 
before the Governor, the Judge, and the 
Council together, and they said to her : 
' Your father is dead, your brothers are 
dead, and all your other relatives are gone, 
but we have kept you because we do not 
wish to make you suffer. Now just be a 
good Turkish girl and you shall be married 
to a Turkish officer and be comfortable and 
happy.' It is said that she looked quietly 
into their faces and replied : ' My father is 
not dead, my brothers are not dead; it is 



180 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

true you have killed them, but they live 
in Heaven. I shall live with them. I can 
never do this if I am unfaithful to my con- 
science. As for marrying, I have been 
taught that a woman must never marry a 
man unless she loves him. This is a part 
of our religion. How can I love a man who 
comes from a nation that has so recently 
killed my friends ? I should neither be a 
good Christian girl nor a good Turkish girl 
if I did so. Do with me what you wish.' 
They sent her away, with the few other 
brave ones, into the hopeless land. Stories 
of this kind can also be duplicated " (p. 355). 

" The men were finally convinced of the 
uselessness of their efforts when one of the 
younger and prettiest girls spoke up for 
herself and said : ' No one can mix in my 
decisions; I will not "turn" [change her 
religion], and it is I myself that say it ' " 
(p. 357). 

" Mr. A. F., a colporteur, had been wilhng 
to embrace Islam, but his wife refused to 
recognize his apostasy, and declared that 
she would go into exile with the rest of the 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 181 

people, so he went with his wife and was 
killed " (p. 378). 

" Again and again they said to me : ' Oh, 
if they would only kill me now, I would 
not care; but I fear they will try to force 
me to become a Mohammedan ' " (p. 403). 

" When we consider the number forced 
into exile and the number beaten to death 
and tortured in a thousand ways, the com- 
paratively small number that turned Moslem 
is a tribute to the staunchness of their hold 
on Christianity " (p. 413). 

" If the events of the past year demon- 
strate anything, they show the practical 
failure of Mohammedanism in its struggle 
for existence against Christianity — ^in its 
attempt to eliminate a race which, because 
of Christian education, has been proving 
increasingly a menace to stagnating Moslem 
civilization. We may call it political neces- 
sity or what not, but in essence it is a 
nominally ruling class, jealous of a more 
progressive Christian race, striving by 
methods of primitive savagery to maintain 
the leading place " (p. 413). 



182 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

" The courage of that brave little doctor's 
wife, who knew she must take her two 
babies and face starvation and death with 
them 1 Many began to come to her home — 
to her, for comfort and cheer, and she gave 
it. I have never seen such courage before. 
You have to go to the darkest places of the 
earth to see the brightest lights, to the most 
obscure spot to find the greatest heroes. 

" Her bright smile, with no trace of fear 
in it, was like a beacon light in that mud 
village, where hundreds were doomed. 

" It was not because she did not under- 
stand how they felt; she was one of them. 
It was not because she had no dear ones in 
peril; her husband was far away, minister- 
ing to those who were sending her and her 
babies to destruction " (p. 418). 

" One woman gave birth to twins in one 
of those crowded trucks, and crossing a 
river she threw both her babies and then 
herself into the water " (p. 420). 

" And how are the people going ? As 
they came into B. M., weary and with swollen 
and bleeding feet, clasping their babes to 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 138 

their breasts, they utter not one murmur 
or word of complaint; but you see their 
eyes move and hear the words : ' For Jesus' 
sake, for Jesus' sake ! ' " (p. 478). 

" Let me quote from W. Effendi, from a 
letter he wrote a day before his deportation 
with his young wife and infant child and 
with the whole congregation — 

" ' We now understand that it is a great 
miracle that our nation has lived so many 
years amongst such a nation as this. From 
this we reahze that God can and has shut 
the mouths of lions for many years. May 
God restrain them ! I am afraid they mean 
to kill some of us, cast some of us into most 
cruel starvation and send the rest out of 
this country; so I have very little hope of 
seeing you again in this world. But be 
sure that, by God's special help, I will do 
my best to encourage others to die manly. 
I will also look for God's help for myself to 
die as a Christian. May this country see 
that, if we cannot live here as men, we can 
die as men. May many die as men of God. 
May God forgive this nation all their sin 



1«4 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

which they do without knowing. May the 
Armenians teach Jesus' hfe by their death, 
which they could not teach by their Ufe or 
have failed in showing forth. It is my 
great desire to see a Reverend Ali, or Osman, 
or Mohammed. May Jesus soon see many 
Turkish Christians as the fruit of His blood. 
" 'May the war end soon, in order to 
save the Moslems from their cruelty (for 
they increase in that from day to day) and 
from their ingrained habit of torturing others. 
Therefore we are waiting on God, for the 
sake of the Moslems as well as of the 
Armenians. May He appear soon ' " (p. 504). 

'' Before the girls were taken, the Kai- 
makam asked each one, in the presence of 
the Principal of the College, whether they 
wanted to become Mohammedans and stay, 
or go. They all replied that they would go. 
Only Miss H. became a Mohammedan, and 
went to live with G. Professors E. and 
F. F. had been arrested with other Armenians, 
but in the name of all the teachers some 
£250 to £300 were presented to the officials, 
and so they were let free " (p. 370). 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 185 



«c 



The priests were among the first to be 
sent off. A Turk described how K. K. was 
killed. They stripped him of all his clothes, 
excepting his underclothing. With his hands 
bound behind his back, he knelt, with his 
son beside him, and they finished him off 
with axes, while he was praying. The same 
description was given of the execution of 
L. L. — how they took off his head by hack- 
ing down into his shoulders with axes and 
carving the head out like a bust " (p. 371). 



Group C 

" But the [Armenian] revolutionists con- 
ducted themselves with remarkable restraint 
and prudence; controlled their hot-headed 
youth ; patrolled the streets to prevent skir- 
mishes; and bade the villagers endure in 
silence : better a village or two burned un- 
avenged than that any attempt at reprisals 
should furnish an excuse for massacre " 
(p. 33). 

" Some of the rules for their men [the 
Armenian defenders of Van] were : ' Keep 



136 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

clean ; do not drink ; tell the truth ; do not 
curse the religion of the enemy ' " (p. 35). 

" But, enraged as Djevdet was by this 
unexpected and prolonged resistance, was 
it to be hoped that he could be persuaded 
to spare the lives of one of these men, 
women and children ? " (p. 39). 

" Not all the Turks had fled from the 
city [Van]. Some old men and women and 
children had stayed behind, many of them 
in hiding. The Armenian soldiers, unlike 
Turks, were not making war on such " (p. 41). 

" Our Turkish refugees cost us a fearful 
price. . . . Then, for four days more, two 
Armenian nurses cared for the [Turkish] sick 
ones at night and an untrained man nurse 
helped me during the daytime " (p. 42). 

" Mr. Yarrow, seeing all this, said : ' I 
am amazed at the self-control of the Arme- 
nians, for though the Turks did not spare 
a single wounded Armenian, the Armenians 
are helping us to save the Turks — a thing 
that I do not believe even Europeans would 
do ' " (p. 70). 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 137 

" The Turks offered to the Georgians the 
provinces of Koutais and of Tiflis, the 
Batoum district and a part of the province 
of Trebizond; to the Tartars, Shousha, 
the mountain country as far as Vladikav- 
kaz, Bakou, and a part of the province of 
Ehsavetpol; to the Armenians they offered 
Kars, the province of Erivan, a part of 
Ehsavetpol; a fragment of the province of 
Erzeroum, Van and Bitlis. According to 
the Young Turk scheme, all these groups 
were to become autonomous under a Turkish 
protectorate. The Erzeroum Congress re- 
fused these proposals, and advised the Young 
Turks not to hurl themselves into the 
European conflagration — a dangerous adven- 
ture which would lead Turkey to ruin " 
(p. 80). 

" The Turkish regulars and Kurds, 
amounting now to something like 80,000 
altogether, pushed higher and higher up 
the heights and surrounded the main Arme- 
nian position at close quarters. Then fol- 
lowed one of those desperate and heroic 
struggles for life which have always been 



138 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the pride of mountaineers. Men, women 
and children fought with knives, scythes, 
stones, and anything else they could handle. 
They rolled blocks of stone down the steep 
slopes, killing many of the enemy. In a 
frightful hand-to-hand combat, women were 
seen thrusting their knives into the throats 
of Turks and thus accounting for many of 
them. On August 5, the last day of the 
fighting, the blood-stained rocks of Antok 
were captured by the Turks. The Armenian 
warriors of Sassoun, except those who had 
worked round to the rear of the Turks to 
attack them on their flanks, had died in 
battle" (p. 87). 

"In the first week of July 20,000 soldiers 
arrived from Constantinople by way of 
Harpout with munitions and eleven guns, 
and laid siege to Moush " (p. 89). 

" The energetic Armenian committees have 
taken care of their own people, and have 
been unexpectedly generous to the Syrians 
who are quartered in their midst " (p. 107). 

" He met an Armenian officer who had 
escaped from the Turks, who told him of 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 189 

the deportation and massacre of the Arme- 
nians. He said that the attitude of the 
Turks towards the Armenians was more or 
less good at the beginning of the war, but 
it was suddenly changed after the Turkish 
defeat at Sari-Kamysh, as they laid the 
blame for this defeat upon the Armenians, 
though he could not tell why " (p. 231). 

" The fact cannot be too strongly empha- 
sized that there was no ' rebellion ' " (p. 34). 



X 



GREAT BRITAIN AND ARMENIA— THE LATE 

DUKE OF Argyll's views— an appeal 

TO BRITAIN 

There is no brighter page in the glorious 
history of the British Empire than the 
records of the Hberties that conduce to the 
contentment and happiness of peoples— free- 
dom of thought and worship, freedom of 
speech and association, freedom of movement 
and habitation, freedom of language, etc. ; as 
well as measures of self-government varying 
in accordance with local needs and circum- 
stances—granted unstintingly to the great 
family of nations and races constituting 
that marvellous commonwealth. This policy 
of broad, liberal justice has proved, under 
the stern test of this great war, the highest 
statesmanship and the strongest bond of 
empire. Freedom, justice, humanity have 
proved an infinitely stronger impetus to 

140 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 141 

loyalty than " f rightfulness," a stronger 
cement, a superior and better " paying " 
stock-in-trade of empire by far than the 
jack- boot and the yatagan. The conclusive 
and practical demonstration of this great 
fact by the British Empire will probably 
exercise a far-reaching influence for good 
on the future policies of empires and the 
Hberties of mankind. The British Flag has 
not only carried security, order and justice 
wherever it has gone, it has scrupulously 
respected religious and national sentiment 
everywhere. It has not denied to the 
peoples under its sway, or attempted to 
suppress, the sentiments and allegiances 
which it has itself held sacred. It has 
maintained the freedom of the seas as I 
believe no international device could have 
achieved it. I do not say this to please 
British readers. I have lived and travelled 
among small peoples and subject peoples 
large and small, and that is the impression 
I have gathered. Thus the Union Jack has 
become a symbol of freedom and fairplay 
the world over, and persecuted peoples have 
long had the conviction, deep down in their 



142 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

hearts, that British influence is continually 
at work towards their ultimate liberation. 
If we were to reverse Mr. Gladstone's famous 
challenge concerning Austria, and ask, 
mutatis mutandis : " Can any one put his 
finger on the map of the world and say, 
' Here the British Empire has wrought 
evil ' ? " it may be that Count Reventlow 
himself and the author of the " Hymn of 
Hate " might find themselves baffled. How- 
ever opinions may differ as to the justice of 
some of her wars, the just and liberal 
treatment of the peoples that have come 
under British dominion is an indisputable 
historical fact to which the masses of man- 
kind owe at least as much gratitude as they 
do to the French Revolution. Ireland may 
be singled out, and not without reason, if I 
may say so, as the one shaded spot on this 
bright page of the story of the spread of 
British liberty. To the neutral observer it 
certainly seems strange that Ireland, so 
near the home of liberty and the stronghold 
of democratic institutions, should be so long 
denied the full and free enjoyment of those 
blessings liberally bestowed upon the more 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 143 

distant parts of the empire. Possibly neutral 
observers do not and cannot understand the 
difficulties and obstacles that have hitherto 
proved insuperable. It is outside the scope 
of my subject and beyond my competence 
to enter into a discussion of the Irish 
question here, but this much I may say, 
that Ireland should convince rulers in all 
countries that material prosperity alone " is 
no remedy." Security, order, prosperity, 
an efficient and equitable administration 
may palliate but can never heal a political 
injustice. They can never satisfy the legiti- 
mate aspirations for self-rule of a high- 
spirited and cultured people conscious of a 
strong, indestructible will as well as the 
undoubted capacity to govern itself. On 
the other hand, to compare the wrongs and 
sufferings of Ireland (and Poland) with the 
agony of Armenia, as is sometimes done, is 
to compare a headache, an acute headache 
if you will, with the Black Death. 

It is in keeping with the ill-fortune that 
has dogged the footsteps of the Armenian 
people for five centuries that Armenia should 
have been the one exception to the rule; 



144 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the one country which has been denied the 
blessings and benefits that have accrued to 
every small people which has come within 
the sphere of, or whose fortunes have been 
directly or indirect!}^ affected by, the policy 
or interests of the British Empire. 

One of the most striking features of what 
has been said and written in this country 
on the treatment meted out by the Turks 
to their Armenian subjects during the war 
has been the paucity of reference to the 
effect, incidental and indirect no doubt, but 
the real and disastrous effect, nevertheless, 
of British policy in Turkey since the Crimean 
War upon the fate of the Armenian subjects 
of the Turk. This is in contrast with what 
was said and written during previous mas- 
sacres, and is no doubt attributable to the 
fact of the country being at war. I am 
not touching this aspect of the question in 
the way of a grievance. I well know, and 
most gratefully recognize what the British 
Government and people have done and are 
still doing for us during the long and ghastly 
nightmare through which we are passing. 
The noble and unremitting efforts of Lord 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 145 

and Lady Bryce, Lady Frederick Cavendish, 
Mr. Aneurin Williams, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, 
Miss Robinson, Mrs. and Miss Hiekson, Mrs. 
Cole, Mr. Noel Buxton and his brother the 
Rev. Harold Buxton, Mr. Arthur G. Symonds, 
Mr. Llew Williams, the Rev. Greenland, Mr. 
Arnold J. Toynbee, and so many other friends 
of Armenia in this country, have placed us 
under a lasting debt of gratitude to them and 
to Britain. Lord Bryce's name will live in 
Armenian history as long as Armenia lasts. 

But I do think it is fair, in justice to the 
people of this great and righteous empire, 
to one-half of the Armenian nation who 
have fallen as heroes and heroines both in 
war and martyrdom, and to " the little 
blood " that is left to the Armenian people, 
that the facts in this connection should be 
placed frankly and fully before the British 
public at this juncture, so that it may be 
able to form an equitable estimate of the 
reparation due to the Armenians, not only 
for the crimes and ravages committed by 
the enemy during the war, but also in the 
light of the obligations and responsibilities 
incurred by Europe in general and Great 



146 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

Britain in particular for the Armenian sub- 
jects of the Ottoman Empire by Art. 61 of the 
Treaty of BerUn and the Cyprus Convention. 

I have said " Great Britain," but it would 
be more accurate to say '' the British 
Government of the day," for I firmly 
believe — in fact, who will doubt? — ^that if 
the British people had had the slightest 
suspicion that the Treaty of Berlin and the 
Cyprus Convention had in them the germs 
of the disaster that has since overtaken the 
Christian subjects of the Porte, they would 
never have ratified those treaties. Nor do 
I suggest, I need hardly say, that the 
statesmen who are responsible for these 
diplomatic instruments consciously and de- 
liberately jeopardized the existence of an 
ancient Christian people. Lord Salisbury's 
sympathetic utterances in 1895-96 show un- 
mistakably how deeply distressed he was 
at the grievous turn events had taken, and 
still more at the powerlessness of the Concert 
of Europe to save the Armenians from the 
position of extreme peril in which the 
Concert had placed them in 1878. 

Successive British Governments have made 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 147 

frequent attempts to improve the lot of the 
Armenians; but the more they tried the 
more the Turks massacred. There is no 
fairer-minded pubHc than the British, whose 
hospitahty and the blessings of whose rule 
I have gratefully enjoyed for many years, 
as have some thousands of my compatriots 
in almost every part of the empire. There 
is also no one more ready and anxious to 
pay his debt than the Briton when he knows 
what he owes. I have therefore no fear 
whatever of arousing any resentment by 
calling the attention of the British public 
to the existence of this old liability. On 
the contrary, I am convinced that the fact 
will be taken note of in good part, and by 
most even thankfully. I read a Press article 
not long ago — ^it was, if I remember rightly, 
a review of Mr. Llew Williams's book, 
Armenia Past and Present in The Court 
Journal — ^which ended with the following 
question : " If these terrible things are true 
and we have any responsibility, why are 
we not told so ? " 

As regards the nature of the responsibili- 
ties and obligations, I refer my readers to 



148 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

the Appendix, where will be found the texts 
of Art. 61 of the Treaty of Berlin, Art. 18 
of the Treaty of San Stefano — which was 
torn up and superseded by the Treaty of 
Berlin — the full text of the Cyprus Con- 
vention, and Lord Salisbury's Dispatch to 
Sir Henry Layard containing instructions 
for the negotiation of that Convention. 

I may here point out that though at first 
sight there appears to be little difference 
between the wording of Art. 16 of the 
Treaty of San Stefano and Art. 61 of the 
Treaty of Berlin, there is this fundamental 
difference between the application of the 
two clauses that, while the former left the 
Russian Army in occupation of the Armenian 
provinces until the reforms should be an 
accomplished fact, the latter was a mere 
Turkish promise to be performed after their 
evacuation by the Russian forces. How the 
Turk performed his promise is well enough 
known, and forms the darkest page of modern 
history — probably of all history. 

Those who have the interest and the time 
for fuller information on the subject I 
recommend to refer to Mr. Gladstone's 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 149 

famous speeches on the Eastern Question 
and the Treaty of Berhn, the debates in both 
Houses of Parhament on the massacres of 
1895-96, Canon Maccoll's '' The Sultan and 
the Powers," Mr. W. Llew Wilhams's ''Ar- 
menia Past and Present," and last but not 
least, " Our Responsibilities for Turkey," by 
the late Duke of Argyll. This frank and 
admirable commentary on the bearing of 
British policy upon the Armenian question is 
now unfortunately out of print. I therefore 
quote, with apologies, the following lengthy 
extract for the convenience of those who may 
have difficulty in procuring a copy. It is 
an authority that will command general and 
respectful attention.^ (The italics are mine.) 
*' Nothing can be more childish than to 
suppose that the significance and effect of 
such a change as this ^ can be measured or 
appreciated by looking at the mere gram- 
matical meaning of the words. The words 
seemed harmless enough. They may even 

^ Our Responsibilities for Turkey, by the Duke 
of Argyll, K.G., K.T., John Murray, 1896, p. 72. 

2 The supersession of Article 16 of the Treaty of San 
Stefano by Article 61 of the Treaty of Berlin. 



150 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

seem to be most benevolent and most wise 
in the interests of the Christian subjects of 
the Porte in Armenia. But when we look 
at the facts which lay behind the words, and 
at the motives which were at work among 
the contracting parties, we must see that 
nothing could have been devised more fatal 
to their interests. The change which the 
new words affected in the Treaty of San 
Stefano wounded the pride and the most 
justifiable ambition of Russia to be the 
protector of her co-religionists in provinces 
with which no other Christian Power had 
any natural connection. On the other hand, 
it delighted the low cunning of the Turk, in 
constituting another ' rift within the lute ' 
which by and by would be quite sure to 
make the ' music mute ' of any effective 
concert between the Powers of Europe. 
The Turk could see at a glance that, whilst 
it relieved him of the dangerous pressure of 
Russia, it substituted no other pressure 
which his own infinite dexterity in delays 
could not easily make abortive. As for the 
unfortunate Armenians, the change was simply 
one which must tend to expose them to the 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 151 

increased enmity of their tyrants, whilst it 
damaged and discouraged the only protec- 
tion which was possible under the inexorable 
conditions of the physical geography of the 
country?- 

" But this is not the whole of the responsi- 
bihty which falls on us out of the inter- 
national transactions connected with the 
Treaty of Berlin. After that treaty had 
been concluded, we entered by ourselves 
into a separate, and for a while a secret, 
convention with Turkey, by which we under- 
took to defend her Asiatic provinces by 

1 Town Topics of February 10, 1917, had the follow- 
ing : " The idiotic and ignorant criticism of the Navy- 
one hears occasionally, recalls an immortal answer by 
a harassed First Lord, during an earlier Armenian 
atrocity (1895-96)— 

" ' Will the right honourable gentleman tell the 
House definitely whether it is proposed to send a 
British battleship to Armenia ? ' asked the bore who 
worried about every country but his own. 

" ' It is not proposed to send any ships there,' re- 
plied the Minister gravely. ' Navigation, I am informed 
by expert advisers at the Admiralty, has not been good 
in the vicinity of Ararat since the cruise of the Ark.' " 

Would to God that this intelligence had reached 
the Foreign Offices of Europe twenty years earlier, 
before the signing of the Treaty of Berlin, 



152 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

force of arms from any further conquests 
on the part of Russia, and in return we asked 
for nothing more than a lease of Cyprus, and 
a new crop of Turkish promises that she 
would introduce reforms in her administra- 
tion of Armenia. No security whatever was 
asked or offered for the execution of those 
promises. We simply repeated the old mis- 
take of 1856, of trusting entirely to the good 
faith of Turkey, or to her gratitude. But 
this time the mistake was repeated after 
twenty-two years' continued experience of 
the futility of such a trust. As to gratitude, 
it must have been quite clear to the Turks 
that we were acting in our own supposed 
interests in resisting the advance of Russia 
at any cost. 

'' No doubt we had occasion to remember, 
with some natural bitterness, the sacrifice 
to Russia of all that the gallant General 
Williams had done for Turkey in his splendid 
defence of Kars. But we ought to have 
remembered, also, how dreadful had been 
the account given by that able and gallant 
man of the detestable Government which 
he was defending. We ought to have re- 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 158 

membered how easy were the reforms which 
he had recommended, if the Turkish Govern- 
ment had been honest; and how they had 
all been systematically evaded. We ought, 
above all, to have considered the inevitable 
effect of this new treaty of guarantee upon 
the sharp cunning of the Turks. They saw 
how eagerly it was sought by us, and they 
must have concluded that, whilst we were 
clearly not only earnest, but excited, in our 
opposition to Russia, we were comparatively 
careless and lukewarm about any changes 
in their own system of government. They 
must have seen that the new convention^ 
practically superseded even the slightest re- 
straints put upon them by the Treaty of Berlin, 
and that the Christian population of Armenia 
were practically left entirely at their mercy, 

" Let us look back upon all these transac- 
tions as a whole, and try to form some 
estimate of the position of responsibility 
in which they have placed us towards the 
Christian populations subject to the Ottoman 
dominion. In 1854-56 we had saved that 
dominion from destruction by defeating, 
^ The Cyprus Convention. 



154 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 



i 



and locally disarming, its great natural 
enemy. We had set up that dominion with 
new immunities from attack, and we had 
choked off from any protectorate over the 
Christians the only Power which would or 
could exert any such influence with effect. 
We had done this without providing any 
substitute of our own, except a recorded 
promise from the Turks. We had provided 
no machinery whereby bad faith on the part 
of Turkey could be proved and punished. 
Then, twenty years later, in 1876, we had 
obstinately refused to join the other Powers 
of Europe in remedying this great defect, 
by putting a combined pressure on Turkey 
to compel her to establish effective guarantee 
for the future. In 1878 we had denounced 
the treaty in which Russia, by her own 
expenditure of blood and treasure, had im- 
posed on Turkey the obligations which we 
had admitted to be needful, but which we 
had ourselves declined to do anything to 
enforce. Then, in the same year, at Berlin, 
we had again done all we could to choke off 
the only Power which had the means and 
the disposition to secure the fulfilment of 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 155 

any promises at all. Particularly in Armenia 
we had substituted for a promise to Russia 
which her power, her geographical position, 
and her pride might have really led her to 
enforce, another promise to all the Powers 
which, on the face of it, was absurd — namely, 
a promise to let all the Powers ' superintend 
the execution ' of domestic reforms in a remote 
and very inaccessible country. Lastly, in 
the same year, as we had already choked off 
Russia, we now proceeded by a separate 
Convention to choke off also all the other 
Powers collectively, by inducing Turkey to 
give a special promise to ourselves, apart 
from them altogether. For the performance 
of this special promise we provided no 
security whatever, but trusted entirely, as 
we had done in 1856, to the good faith of 
a Power which we knew had none. With 
Russia deeply offended and estranged, and the 
rest of Europe set aside or superseded — such 
were the conditions under which we abandoned 
the Christian subjects of the Porte in Asia to 
a Government incurably barbarous and corrupt. 
" And now, we are astonished and dis- 
gusted by finding that the terrible conse- 



156 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

quences of all this selfish folly have fallen on 
those whom we had professed, and whom 
we were bound by every consideration 
of honour, to protect. Surely these years 
might have brought us a reconsideration 
of our position. The fever of our popular 
Russophobia had sensibly abated. We had 
secured our " scientific frontier " in India, 
and Russian expansion had taken a new 
direction in the Far East. New combina- 
tions — and some new disseverments — had 
taken place in Europe. The whole position 
of affairs was favourable to a policy of escape 
from bad traditions — from obsolete doctrines 
— and from duties which it was impossible 
we could discharge. Surely we might have 
asked ourselves, What had we been doing 
all these years to fulfil those duties? 
Nothing. And yet all along we were not 
ignorant that the vicious Government which 
we had so long helped to sustain against all 
the natural agencies that would have brought 
it to an end long ago was getting no better, 
but rather worse. We knew this perfectly 
well, and we have recorded our knowledge 
of it in a document of unimpeachable 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 157 

authority. In the second year after the 
Treaty of Berlin, when the obhgations we 
had undertaken under it were still fresh in 
our recollection, we had made one more 
endeavour to recall the Ottoman Power to 
some sense of shame, if not to some sense of 
duty. In 1880 we had a special Envoy at 
the Porte, one of our most distinguished 
public men— Mr. Goschen; and we had 
called together at Constantinople a meeting 
of all the Ambassadors of the six Powers of 
Europe who were signatories of the Treaty 
of Berlin. They drew up an Identic Note, 
which they all signed and presented to the 
Porte. In that Note they declared that no 
reforms had been, or were even on the way 
to being, adopted, and that so desperate was 
the misgovernment of the country, that ' it 
would lead in all probability to the destruc- 
tion of the Christian population of vast 
districts.' Could a more dreadful confession 
have been made in respect to the conduct 
and policy of any Christian Government? 

" This Identic Note commented severely 
on the calculated falsehoods of all kinds, 
and on the cunning procrastinations, which 



158 ARMENIA AND THE WAR „ 

characterized the conduct and language of 
the Porte. It concluded by reminding that 
Government, as an essential fact, ' that by 
treaty engagements Turkey was bound to 
introduce the reforms which had been often 
indicated,' and that these reforms were to 
be ' carried out under the supervision of the 
Powers.' 

" We might as well have addressed our 
representations to a convict just released 
from a long sentence, and determined at 
once to renew his career of crime. And so 
we had gone on for fifteen more years since 
1880, failing to take, or even attempt taking, 
any effectual measures to protect the helpless 
populations subject to a Government which 
we knew to be so cruel and oppressive — 
populations towards whom we lay under so 
many responsibilities, from our persistent 
protection of their oppressors. At last comes, 
in 1894, one of those appalling outbreaks of 
brutality on the part of the Turks which 
always horrify, but need never astonish, 
the world. They are all according to what 
Bishop Butler would have called the ' natural 
constitution and course of things,' that is to 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 159 

say, they are the natural results of the nature 
and government of the Ottoman Turks." 

Such is the nature of Great Britain's debt 
to us. It was rashly incurred by her states- 
men. Successive British Governments have 
made strenuous efforts and run great risks 
to discharge it. But it has proved undis- 
chargeable for forty years, with consequences 
to us which are well known. This terrible 
war and the ensuing peace will give Great 
Britain both the power and the opportunity 
to discharge that obligation, and our weapons 
for enforcing our claim are the honour, the 
conscience and the never-failing sense of 
justice of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland 
and the British Empire. I appeal to these 
in the name of my sorely-stricken nation, 
pale, prostrate and bleeding almost to death, 
to stand by us and fight our battle at 
the Peace Conference. And if my appeal 
reaches a wide enough circle of British and 
Irish men and women, I am confident that 
my nation will not die, but will live and 
prosper, and carve out a future that will 
amply compensate her for the past. 



^1 



XI 

AN APPEAL TO THE COMING PEACE 
CONFERENCE 

Gentlemen, this historic conference has 
come together to draw up a map of a new 
Europe and a new Near East which will 
in no part violate the principle of nationality 
— ^the great weakness and inherent injustice 
of former treaties, which has been largely 
responsible for the disastrous war now 
happily come to an end. 

You have also assembled as a great 
international tribunal to uphold the sanctity 
of law and humanity, and to give judgment 
as to the just reparation that must be made, 
and as to the penalties to be exacted for all 
outrages committed during the war against 
humanity and the laws and usages of civilized 
warfare. 

Among the multitude of problems, great 
and small, that await a just and wise settle- 



160 



1 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 161 

ment at your hands, there is also the 
Armenian question. 

This question may appear, to some of you 
at least, a small and insignificant one in 
the presence of the great and weighty ques- 
tions of world-wide importance that await 
settlement. I claim for it without any 
fear of contradiction that in point of out- 
raged humanity and civilization, measured 
by the sacrifice of innocence, the magnitude 
and unspeakable horrors of the martyrdom, 
destruction and ruin that has been brought 
upon this people with a calculated, deliberate 
object, and without the slightest provoca- 
tion ; I maintain that, on these incontestable 
grounds, this is the greatest Wrong that 
ever demanded justice and reparation at 
the bar of a great International Tribunal. 

And it is not Turkey and Germany alone 
who owe us reparation, although upon their 
shoulders lies the guilt for the innocent 
blood that has been ruthlessly shed, the 
wanton destruction that has been wrought 
and the untold suffering and sorrow brought 
upon this people during the war. All the 
Great Powers of Europe have their share of 

M 



162 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

responsibility for leaving them at the mercy 
of the Turk to be murdered, burned, out- 
raged, enslaved, to provide this or that 
European Statesman the satisfaction of 
having scored a point against his opponent 
in the sordid jealousies and rivalries of 
conflicting interests. 

In 1877 Russian armies, partly under 
Armenian generals, occupied our country, 
and we hoped and believed that the hour, 
of our liberation from the hideous nightmare : 
of Turkish domination had struck. 

It was a short-lived joy. The Congress 
of Berlin assembled soon after, tore up the 
Treaty of San Stefano which had given us, 
the blessing of effective Russian protection, I 
compelled the liberating Russian armies 
to evacuate our country, and left us once 
again the sport and prey of our Turkish and J 
Kurdish tormentors. 

After the butcheries of 1895-96 Great 
Britain was prepared to exact effective 
guarantees from the Sultan Abdul Hamid, 
if necessary by force of arms, against a 
repetition of these unspeakable barbarities; 
but the Russian Government of the day, sore 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 163 

at the rebuff administered to it by the Treaty 
of BerHn and the Cyprus Convention, opposed 
Great Britain's proposal of taking coercive 
measures to stay the hand of the Great 
Assassin. 

In 1913 a Scheme of Reforms proposed 
by Russia formed the subject of discussion 
by the Powers, and was finally agreed to 
by Turkey after it had undergone such modi- 
fications and revisions at the instance of the 
Turks, backed by Germany, as to render it of 
little practical value. The war intervened 
before the scheme could be put into opera- 
tion, and it remained a dead letter, as had all 
its predecessors. Meanwhile massacre, out- 
rage, rapine, plunder, and all conceivable 
forms of oppression and persecution went on 
without respite, though in varying degrees 
of intensity, culminating in the frightful 
hecatombs of the last two years. 

Although, of course, such was not their 
object and intention, the net result of these 
transactions was to give the Turk the 
opportunity, as events have unfortunately 
proved, of murdering, burning, drowning, 
torturing, violating, enslaving and forcibly 



164 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

converting to Islam at least 2,000,000 un 
offending and defenceless Christians within 
the comparatively short space of forty years. 
I do not for a moment suggest that the 
authors of these Treaties themselves foresaw 
such a result of their efforts. Biit that makes 
no difference to the result. Europe backed 
" the wrong horse," as Lord Sahsbury had 
the courage to say, and the stakes were the 
lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent 
Christians— men, women and children— and a f 
sum of human suffering and misery such as 
the world has probably never seen before, f 

I gratefully acknowledge the efforts made 
by the successive British, French, Russian 
and Itahan Governments, from time to 
time, to bring moral or diplomatic pressure 
upon the Turks to treat us with less harshness 
and inhumanity. But the Turk, Young and 
Old, knew that coercion would never be 
used against him. He treated all European 
representations with amusement and con- 
tempt and went his way relentlessly, intent 
upon wiping out the whole race. He felt| 
more secure from the danger of coercion after 
the Christian Emperor WilUam II, on his^ 
return from his pilgrimage to the Holy 



li 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 165 

Land, paid a visit to and fraternized with 
the Sultan Abdul Hamid while his hands were 
still red with the blood of the fearful 
massacres of 1895-96. 

That, gentlemen, has been the net result 
of the solemn promises given by the Turks 
in the Treaty of Berlin, for which every 
Signatory Power has its share of responsi- 
bility. Since that Treaty became the law of 
Europe we have made numerous appeals 
and representations for the application of 
Art. 61. The reply we received from the 
Ministers of the Signatory Powers was almost 
the same every time and everywhere. " In- 
sistence on the application of Art. 61 will 
lead to complications; you must wait for a 
favourable opportunity." 

Gentlemen, that long-looked-for oppor- 
tunity has at last come. Armenia — " the 
little blood that is left to her " — stands at 
the bar of this Conference, full of hope and 
expectation that the Entente Powers will 
compel Turkey in the first place to make 
full reparation for the untold horrors, out- 
rages and injustices that she has inflicted 
upon her ; that they will compel Germany to 
compensate her for her acquiescence in the 



166 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

atrocities committed by the Turks while 
Turkey was under her influence and control ; 
and that they will add their own quota as a 
debt of honour and conscience in return for 
a part at least of what she has had to endure 
as a result of the diplomatic transactions 
cited above, for which they have their share 
of responsibility. You cannot give us back 
our dead, but this Conference gives you 
the opportunity of exacting and making a 
reparation as generous as our trials and 
sacrifices have been heavy. 

'' What do you expect this Conference to 
give the Armenian people as their adequate 
reparation and just rights ? " I would prob- 
ably be asked. 

This is what I should expect the Conference 
to give to my nation, in all justice and equity : 

The formation of an autonomous Armenia, 
comprising the vilayets of Van, Bitlis, 
Erzeroum, Kharput, Diyarbekir and Eastern 
Sivas, also Cilicia with an outlet on the Gulf 
of Alexandretta, say from the port of 
Alexandretta to a few miles south-west of 
Mersina. 

This State to be an internationally 
guaranteed neutral State with its ports 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 167 

and markets open to all nations. It would 
have an Organic Statute drawn up for it 
by the Protecting Powers, England, France, 
and Russia, giving equality before the law to 
all the different elements of the population 
with extra-territorial rights and consular 
courts for Europeans for a term of years. 
Russia to act as mandatory of the Protecting 
Powers, and during the first few years the 
executive to consist of a Governor- General 
or High Commissioner and a mixed Legisla- 
tive Council appointed by the Protecting 
Powers. A Legislative Assembly to be called 
together as soon as the country regains its 
normal state. 

The country being at present in a more or 
less chaotic state, an army of occupation 
will be necessary for as many years as will 
be required to organize and train an efficient 
gendarmerie from the local population. 
European advisers and heads of departments 
would be necessary, but there are large 
numbers of experienced Armenian adminis- 
trators, magistrates, post and telegraph 
inspectors, engineers, etc., etc., in the Otto- 
man Empire as well as in the Caucasus, Egypt 
and the Balkans, who would gladly put their 



168 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

services at the disposal of their own country. 
Some would probably come from America, il 
India and elsewhere. Adequate financial || 
compensation by Turkey ^ and Germany 
would place at the disposal of the executive || 
ample funds to begin the work of rebuilding 
the ruined towns and villages and recon- 
struction generally, and to carry on the 
Government of the country until the first 
year's harvest is sown and gathered and 
revenue begins coming into the Treasury. 

This is the scheme I would propose in I 
broad outline, it being impossible to go into 
details here. 

" But there is not a large enough number 
of Armenians left to form a State," I may 
be told, as I have been told so often recently. 
(I may say here, in parenthesis, that the 
Turkish and German delegates cannot ad- 
vance this objection, as their Governments 
have denied the existence of any massacres.) 

That is an entirely mistaken assumption, 
created by the frequent but inaccurate use 

^ A friend of mine, a Turkish Armenian well 
acquainted with local conditions, told me that 
£50,000,000 would be a conservative estimate of 
the material loss of the 1,200,000 massacred, deported, 
enslaved, but in all cases despoiled, Armenians. 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 169 

of the phrase " Armenian extermination." 
The Turks did make a final ruthless attempt 
to exterminate us, and have dealt us a 
staggering blow as a race; but, gentlemen, 
they have not quite succeeded in their 
nefarious design, and it would be a sad day, 
indeed, for civilization if such a design had 
succeeded. 

There are to-day 500,000 Turkish Ar- 
menians in the parts of vilayets in occupation 
of the Russian armies, in the Caucasus and 
Northern Persia. Far from their spirits 
being broken, these people are animated 
with the unshakable determination that their 
beloved country shall rise again from its 
ashes and their nation revive and enter upon 
a new era of security and free development. 
Armenians all over the world are animated 
with the same spirit and determination. 
Of the above half-milHon 50,000 or 60,000, 
mostly able-bodied men, are in different 
parts of the occupied provinces. There are 
a little over 250,000 refugees in the Caucasus 
and Persia, and some 200,000 emigrants and 
refugees from pre-war massacres; most of 
them are ready to return to their homes, one 
potent reason for the readiness of the pre- 



170 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

war emigrants to return being the growing 
scarcity and dearness of land in the fertile 
parts of the Caucasus. Then there are the 
hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 
concentration camps in Northern Meso- 
potamia and Syria. How many are alive 
to return to their devastated homes, I cannot 
say. Perhaps the Turkish delegate will be 
able to inform the Conference on that point. 
Then there are still large numbers of 
Armenians — though mostly old men, women 
and children, so far as our information goes — 
in Anatolia and Thrace, and over 200,000 
mostly young, intelligent, ambitious men, 
who have emigrated since the beginning of 
Abdul Hamid's reign of terror, to the United 
States, Egypt, the Balkans, and different 
other countries. A not unimportant number 
of these will return to their native land ready 
to ''do their bit " in the — to them— sacred 
work of its reconstruction and regeneration 
with invincible industry. 

This will give us within a very short time 
an Armenian population of not much under 
one million souls in the proposed Autonomous 
Armenia. It may not form a majority 
taken as a whole, but it will form the largest 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 171 

coherent ethnological element. In many 
important centres, such as Van, Alashgerd, 
etc., where there are almost no Turks 
left and a much smaller number of Kurds 
than there was before the war, it will form 
an absolute majority. This is an important 
fact which the Conference should bear in 
mind. Although the Armenian element is 
sadly reduced in numbers, the great majority 
of the Turkish and kindred elements in these 
occupied provinces have, as is their wont, 
followed the retreating Turkish armies and 
will probably never return. On the other 
hand, Armenians have for some time past 
and do still percolate through the Turkish 
lines in groups of various sizes and gain the 
Russian lines. This movement of popula- 
tion will almost certainly continue for some 
years, tending to increase the Armenian 
and reduce the Turkish element in the 
proposed Armenian State, if such a State 
is set up. Similar movements of popula- 
tions have always taken place whenever any 
piece of Turkish territory has passed under 
Christian rule. 

I may also remind the Congress that when 
Greece achieved her independence, the 



172 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

population of Greece proper did not exceed 
400,000. 

Another important point bearing on this 
question of population is the fact, to which 
most students of Near Eastern affairs have 
borne witness, that the Armenian race is 
endowed with extraordinary powers of re- 
cuperation, is almost entirely free from the 
diseases that impede the rapid growth of 
population, and is one of the most prolific 
races in the world. Their neighbours, on 
the evidence of travellers and students, are 
less free from disease and, in spite of poly- 
gamy, or perhaps partly because of it, 
are much less prolific. 

But apart from mere counting of heads, 
it is, I believe, generally known and ad- 
mitted that there is a vast difference between 
the moral, intellectual, economic, and in- 
dustrial value of the Armenian population 
as compared with most of its neighbours, 
the Armenians being markedly superior in 
every field of human activity. They have 
proved this even under the most trying 
handicaps, and when they have had a fair 
field they have easily proved themselves the 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 173 

equals of Europeans. In fact, the Armenian 
mind is much more European than Asiatic. ^ 

Lord Cromer has said that " the Armenians 
with the Syrians, are the intellectual cream 
of Near Eastern peoples." 

But apart from all these practical and 
certainly essential and vital considerations 
there remains, messieurs, the moral argument 
which, I feel quite certain, this august 
Conference, representing the will and the 
conscience of Europe, is not minded to ignore. 

After the massacres and deportations of 
1915 Talaat Bey is reported to have said : 
" I have killed the idea of Armenian auto- 
nomy for at least fifty years." Whether he 
said it or not, that was clearly the object — ^to 
kill the Armenian question by wiping out the 
Armenian race, and incidentally to destroy 
the roots of Christianity in Asia Minor. 

Is this Conference going to condone and 
justify the barbarous and revolting practice, 
as a State policy, of the deliberate attempt 

^ M. J. de Morgan says in an article in La Revue 
de Paris (May 1, 1916): "Les Armeniens sont des 
Orientaux par leur habitat seulement, mais des Euro- 
peens par leurs origins, leur parler, leur religion, leurs 
moeurs et leurs aptitudes." 



174 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

to murder a whole nation in cold blood, by 
permitting that infamous policy to succeed 
in its object? 

Is it conceivable that this historic Con- 
ference can bring itself to decree that the 
myriads of our brothers and sisters who have 
fallen victims to the super-tyrants' fury, for 
their religion and their nation, as well as those 
who have fallen in the common struggle for 
Right, have suffered and died in vain ? 

In the name not only of the living, but 
also of the dead, I appeal to you ; I appeal 
to the heart and conscience of Europe to 
desist from enacting such a flagrant and 
cruel injustice. 

M. Paul Doumer, late President of the 
French Senate, declared in Paris not long ago, 
with a fine sense of French chivalry and out- 
raged humanity, that when the question of 
Armenian population came to be considered 
at the end of the war, the dead must be 
counted with the living. Who but my 
martyred nation has the moral right to 
invoke the memorable and exalted words 
of the French officer who, at a moment of 
dire straits for men, looked at his fallen 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 175 

' heroes around him and exclaimed " Debout 
les morts ! " ? 

I appeal to you, in particular, great and 
I noble-hearted Russia, our mighty neighbour 
and protector. Our destiny is indissolubly 
; bound up with yours. Without the protec- 
tion of your mighty sword and your most 
I generous grants to our refugees, the Turk 
'would have succeeded in his sinister design. 
I We will remain ever grateful to you, and 
loyal to the death. We have always proved 
I our unswerving loyalty to you in your hour 
of peril. We in our turn have rendered 
services which have been of value to you. 
Your generals gave our men great praise. 
, Your foremost newspapers hailed our soldiers 
and volunteers, and with truth, as the 
saviours of the Caucasus. Your great 
Statesmen and Ministers declared in the 
jDuma that our terrible sufferings were 
Ichiefly due to our loyalty to Russia. Have 
! trust in us. Help us to stand on our feet 
i again and rebuild our devastated homes. 
\Leave us freedom to develop and progress 
{according to our own national genius. Some 
pf your newspapers are speaking of a scheme 



176 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

to plant Russian colonies in Armenia, " to 
create a dividing zone between the Russian 
and Turkish Armenians." ^ If this is true, it 

^ The Retch, the organ of the Constitutional Demo- 
crats in Russia, has pubhshed the following in its 
issue of July 28, 1916 (O.S.)— 

" The scheme of settling Russian emigrants in the 
occupied parts of Turkish Armenia, recently dis- 
cussed in the Duma, is being energetically carried 
out. This matter has been the subject of a lively 
discussion between the Emigration and Military 
authorities. Investigations are in progress, not only 
in the districts near the frontier, but also further 
afield, the fertile Mush valley being the object of 
special attention. Agricultural battalions have been 
in course of organization since last autumn and 
already number 5000 men. More will be found 
presently. Armenians and Georgians are excluded. 
The task of these young arms is to cultivate the fields 
on which investigations have been carried out, under 
the supervision of agricultural experts, in order to 
facilitate the provisioning of the army. The question 
of emigrating the families of these men is also under 
consideration. i 

" Side by side with this scheme there exists another! 
scheme of settling Cossacks in Turkish Armenia, on 
similar lines to what has already been done in Northernj 
Caucasus with good results. Those who have conceivea 
these schemes have in view the creation of a sufficiently 
broad zone inhabited by Russians, separating the Russian 
Armenians from the Turkish Armenians, 

" Armenian refugees are gradually returning to their 
country and resuming the work of cultivating their i 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 177 

is an injustice. I am speaking candidly as a 
friend of Russia, and a supporter of my 
nationality as my birthright. Russians will 
always be welcome amongst us. To show 
our feelings towards you I may mention 
the fact that in conversation between them- 

lands. They usually settle in the villages that have 
suffered least, their own villages having been totally 
ruined. 

" To avoid confusion, the Grand Duke Nicholas 
issued a Ukase in March last, warning these returned 
refugees to keep themselves in readiness to vacate 
these districts on the establishment of Russian Civil 
Administration. In the same Ukase the Commander- 
in-Chief of the Caucasian Army has decreed that the 
vacant lands in the plains of Alashkert, Diadin and 
Bayazid may be given in hire up to the time of the 
return of their rightful owners. General Yudenitch has 
issued orders, however, prohibiting the settlement in 
these places of any other immigrants except Russians and 
Cossacks. Only those natives are permitted to return 
who are able to prove ownership of land or property 
by legal documents. This arrangement makes it im- 
possible for the natives (Armenians) to return to their 
homes because it is ridiculous to speak of title-deeds, 
when dealing with land in Turkey; and as for other 
documents which prove ownership, these always get 
lost during flight. 

" In the above three plains, also in parts of the 
plain of Bassain, the surviving native inhabitants are 
debarred from returning to their homes and resuming 
their peaceful occupations." 

N 



178 ARMENIA AND THE WAR 

selves Armenians do not speak of you as 
" Russians " but as " keri," which means 
" uncle." But it is manifestly unfair to 
establish colonies and apportion lands before 
the repatriation of our numerous refugees, 
some of whom may be the owners of the land 
given away. Besides, what is the object or 
the necessity of a " dividing zone " between 
the Turkish and Russian Armenians? We 
are all ready to rally to your support again 
if the need should arise, as we have always 
done in your righteous struggle against 
barbarism. Such measures, before the blood 
of our numerous victims is dry on our land, 
grieve and perplex us. I say again, we 
welcome your protection, but enable us to 
say always, as Sir Wilfrid Laurier said of the 
French Canadians, " We are loyal because we 
are free." With such just and liberal treat- 
ment from you, we will not only create in a 
short time important markets for your trade 
down to the shores of the Mediterranean, 
but you will have in us a reliable bulwark 
and counterpoise, on your southern frontier, 
against the turbulent elements who are a 
standing menace to that frontier. The 



ARMENIA AND THE WAR 179 

stronger you help us to grow, the more 
secure that frontier of your empire will be. 

To England, France and Italy I appeal 
jointly with Russia, to prevent the Congress 
from finally condemning to death our long- 
cherished and legitimate aspirations of 
national regeneration, for which we have 
paid such a fearful price. In particular I 
appeal to you to give us an outlet to the sea, 
not only as an indispensable necessity of our 
economic life and development, but also as 
the avenue of Western Culture which a hard 
and cruel fate has so long withheld from us. 

Let the radiant sun of liberty and security 
shine again on our land of sorrow and drive 
away for ever the stifling miasma of the 
Turkish blight, and there will spring to life, 
within a generation, a people with a pas- 
sionate craving for the light and progress of 
the West— a people morally and mentally 
equipped and adapted for the assimilation 
of the New Dispensation not only for its own 
benefit, but also for its dissemination amongst 
its less advanced neighbours — a well-quali- 
fied and willing instrument and leaven of 
Christian civilization. 



POSTSCRIPT 

Since the foregoing pages were written 

and before they had left the printer's hands, 

two momentous events have occurred which 

must profoundly influence not only the 

remaining course of the war, but also, and 

more especially, the settlement of the peace 

on its termination : two events that together 

mark the greatest triumph of democracy 

and civilization the world has seen. The 

Russian revolution and the entry of the 

great American Republic into the ranks of 

the champions of Right and Humanity have 

not only brought peace nearer, they have 

banished any doubt that may have existed 

in the minds of sceptics both in belligerent 

and neutral countries that this war of wars 

is a struggle between the forces of Light and 

Liberty and the powers of Darkness and 

Reaction. 

After watching the course of the struggle 
* 181 



182 POSTSCRIPT 

for more than thirty months, taking note of 
the difference between the methods of war- 
fare employed by the opposing groups of 
beUigerents; after ascertaining their respec- 
tive aims; after long, patient and careful 
deliberation, the greatest of all the neutral 
judges came to the conclusion that " civiliza- 
tion itself seems to be in the balance." (It 
will not be forgotten in the Entente countries, 
I feel sure, that though unlimited submarine 
" f rightfulness " was the immediate casus 
belli, the martyrdom of Armenia played an 
important part in leading President Wilson 
and the people of the United States to that 
conclusion.) The world's greatest Demo- 
cracy, imbued with a deep-rooted love of 
peace and abhorrence of war as to which 
no doubt or suspicion anywhere exists, has 
broken away from a century-old tradition, 
which was the very foundation of its external 
policy, and drawn the sword impelled not 
by ambition or the furtherance of material 
interests of any kind, but by honour and 
the instinctive call of true chivalry to stand 
by those who have carried on a long and 
fierce struggle to save the " desperately 



■t 

I 



POSTSCRIPT 183 

assaulted " free institutions, principles and 
ideals which are its own and humanity's 
most precious and sacred possessions. For 
the first time in history— I think one can 
safely say that—a great nation, led by a 
great and sagacious leader, has gone to war 
prompted almost entirely with the disinter- 
ested motive of upholding its own ideals 
and the ideals and rights of humanity^ 
truly an event of which the best elements 
of the human race will always be proud; 
which will ever stand out as a bright 
and noble landmark in the history of the 
world. 

While these epoch-making events have 
stamped the cause of the Allies with the 
seal of supreme moral sanction, they have 
also made assurance doubly sure that the 
end of the war will confer upon the world a 
lasting peace based upon real justice and 
equity. The presence of the delegates of 
the United States at the Peace Conference 
side by side with the representatives of 
the British Empire, France, Italy, and free 
Russia will constitute a sure and sterling 
guarantee to the world that the determining 



184 POSTSCRIPT 

factors in the moulding of its destinies will 
not be the selfish interests, avowed or veiled, 
of this or that empire, not the whims and 
ambitions of despots and ruling castes or 
the greed of cosmopolitan financiers, but 
" the pure milk," of the broad interests 
of justice and peace, the rights of nations 
great and small and the freedom and welfare 
of mankind itself. 

To the Armenian people it is a final pledge 
that the reparation to be demanded and 
obtained for them, in the terms of peace 
will be commensurate, in full measure, with 
the magnitude of the wrongs and sufferings 
inflicted upon them because, in a vast waste 
of ancient barbarism and fraud, they formed 
an oasis embodying the ideals and principles 
which the democracies of Europe and America 
are struggling to vindicate. 

If the great and free nations of Europe 
have greeted these auspicious events with 
the satisfaction and enthusiasm we have 
witnessed in these last days, it can be 
readily imagined how intense is the rejoicing 
they have evoked in the hearts of the most 
ruthlessly oppressed of all peoples, so long 



POSTSCRIPT 185 

denied the blessings whose advent has been 
placed beyond all doubt by President Wilson's 
clarion call to Democracy and by the declara- 
tions of the Provisional Government of free 
Russia. 

That the declarations of the Provisional 
Government of free and regenerated Russia 
have been received with profound satisfac- 
tion by Armenians, goes without saying. 
These declarations added to those already 
made by the AlUed Governments in regard 
to their war-aims, and President Wilson's 
" Declaration of Liberty "—as his inspiring 
and memorable address to Congress has 
been rightly called— finally ensure the reahza- 
tion of Armenia's legitimate aspiration to 
freedom and self-government. And if the 
Russian people should decide that the new 
Russia shall be a Republic, that would open 
out the vista of a thoroughly democratic, 
integral and united Armenian State free to 
work out her regeneration according to her 
own national genius, under the guidance of 
the Protecting Powers and with their and 
America's generous moral and material 
support. 



186 POSTSCRIPT 

America's interest in Armenia and the 
excellent work of her Missions in numerous 
Armenian centres both in Armenia itself 
and throughout Asia Minor leave no doubt 
that when the time for reconstruction comes, 
American aid — moral, material and cultural 
— ^will be forthcoming on a scale and in a 
manner worthy of that great country and the 
lofty aims for which she entered the war. 
For, what part of the vast war- stricken area in 
Europe and the Near East more acutely and 
tragically exemplifies the evils which the 
Allies and the United States are determined 
to put an end to once and for all, and what 
nobler and more fitting culmination to their 
gigantic efforts and sacrifices for humanity, 
than the redemption and re-birth of this 
thrice-martyred ancient Christian people ? 

Before concluding, I take this opportunity 
to call attention to a passage in Mr. 
Asquith's speech in the House of Commons 
on the entry of the United States into the 
war, which brings into strong relief the guilt 
of the Governments of the Central Powers 
in the stupendous crime of attempting the 
murder of a nation, although the occasion 



POSTSCRIPT 187 

of the speech was of course the very anti- 
thesis of the attitude of the Central Powers 
towards the Armenian atrocities. 

" In such a situation," said Mr. Asquith, 
" aloofness is seen to be not only a blunder 
but a crime. To stand aside with stopped 
ears, with folded arms, with an averted 
gaze, when you have the power to intervene 
is to become not a mere spectator, but an 
accomplice." ^ 

I am quoting this striking utterance by 
one of England's greatest living statesmen 
also in the hope that it may furnish food 
for reflection to those pro -Turks who have 
maintained during pre-war massacres, and 
still maintain, with Count Reventlow and 
his followers, that the massacre of his 
Christian subjects by the Turk is his own 
concern, and that nobody has the right or 
the obligation to intervene and create new 
conditions that will eliminate the possibility 
of its recurrence. 

1 The Times, April 19, 1917. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 

ARTICLE XVI OF THE TREATY OF 
SAN STEFANO 

As the evacuation by the Russian troops of the terri- 
tory which they occupy in Armenia, and which is to 
be restored to Turkey, might give rise to conflicts and 
complications detrimental to the maintenance of good 
relations between the two countries, the Sublime Porte 
engages to carry into effect, without further delay, the 
improvements and reforms demanded by local require- 
ments in the provinces inhabited by Armenians, and 
to guarantee their security from Kurds and Circassians. 



ARTICLE LXI OF THE TREATY OF BERLIN 

The Sublime Porte undertakes to carry out, without 
further delay, the improvements and reforms demanded 
by local requirements in the provinces inhabited by 
the Armenians, and to guarantee their security against 
the Circassians and Kurds. It will periodically make 
known the steps taken to this effect to the Powers, 
who will superintend their application. 



THE CYPRUS CONVENTION 

TURKEY NO. 36 (1878) 

Correspondence respecting the Convention between 
Great Britain and Turkey, of June 4, 1878. 

Presented to the Houses of Parliament by Command 
of Her Majesty 1878. 

191 



192 APPENDIX 

List of Papers 

No. 1. The Marquis of Salisbury to Mr. Layard, 

May 30, 1878. 
No. 2. Sir A. H. Layard to the Marquis of Salisbury, 

one Inclosure June 5, 1878. 
No. 3. Sir A. H. Layard to the Marquis of Salisbury, 

one Inclosure July 1, 1878. 

No. 1 is the letter which conveys to Mr. Layard 
Lord Salisbury's instructions for entering into the 
Convention (as follows) — 



The Marquis of Salisbury to Mr. Layard. 

Foreign Office, 

May 30, 1878. 

Sir, 

The progress of the confidential negotiations 
which have for some time past been in progress between 
Her Majesty's Government and the Government of 
Russia make it probable that those Articles of the 
Treaty of San Stefano which concern European Turkey 
will be sufficiently modified to bring them into harmony 
with the interests of the other European Powers, and 
of England in particular. 

There is, however, no such prospect with respect to 
that portion of the Treaty which concerns Turkey in 
Asia. It is sufficiently manifest that, in respect to 
Batoum and the fortresses north of the Araxes, the 
Government of Russia is not prepared to recede from 
the stipulations to which the Porte has been led by the 
events of the war to consent. Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment have consequently been forced to consider the 



APPENDIX 193 

effect which these agreements, if they are neither 
annulled nor counteracted, will have upon the future 
of the Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire and 
upon the interests of England, which are closely affected 
by the condition of those provinces. 

It is impossible that Her Majesty's Government can 
look upon these changes with indifference. Asiatic 
Turkey contains populations of many different races 
and creeds, possessing no capacity for self-government ^ 
and no aspirations for independence, but owing their 
tranquillity and whatever prospect of political well- 
being they possess entirely to the rule of the Sultan. 
But the Government of the Ottoman Dynasty is that 
of an ancient but still alien conqueror, resting more 
upon actual power than upon the sympathies of com- 
mon nationality. The defeat which the Turkish arms 
have sustained and the known embarrassments of the 
Government will produce a general belief in its deca- 
dence and an expectation of speedy political change, 
which in the East are more dangerous than actual 
discontent to the stability of a Government. If the 
population of Syria, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia 
see that the Porte has no guarantee for its continued 
existence but its own strength, they will, after the evi- 
dence which recent events have furnished of the frailty 
of that reliance, begin to calculate upon the speedy 

^ By a curious irony of events, at the time these lines were 
written by the great EngUsh statesman, Egypt was governed by 
an Armenian Prime Minister, Nubar Pasha, while the victorious 
Russian Army in the Caucasus was under the command of the 
Armenian General Loris Melikoff, the victor of Kars, who later 
became Minister of the Interior and one of the most trusted 
advisers of the Czar Liberator. It is interesting to note that 
Egypt had an Armenian Prime Minister during the reign of the 
IQialif Al-Mustansir (1036-94) by the name of Badr-el-Gamali 
(probably a variation of Bedros Gamalian), "who governed 
wisely and well for twenty years (1073-94)." — See Adrian 
FoRTESCUE : The Leaser Eastern Churches, p. 237. 

O 



194 APPENDIX 

fall of the Ottoman domination, and to turn their eyes 
towards its successor. 

Even if it be certain that Batoum and Ardahan and 
Kars will not become the base from which emissaries 
of intrigue will issue forth, to be in due time followed 
by invading armies, the mere retention of them by 
Russia will exercise a powerful influence in disintegrat- 
ing the Asiatic dominion of the Porte. As a monument 
of feeble defence on the one side, and successful aggres- 
sion on the other, they will be regarded by the Asiatic 
population as foreboding the course of political history 
in the immediate future, and will stimulate, by the 
combined action of hope and fear, devotion to the Power 
which is in the ascendant, and desertion of the Power 
which is thought to be falling into decay. 

It is impossible for Her Majesty's Government to 
accept, without makmg an effort to avert it, the effect 
which such a state of feeling would produce upon 
regions whose political condition deeply concerns the 
Oriental interests of Great Britain. They do not pro- 
pose to attempt the accomplishment of this object by 
taking military measures for the purpose of replacing 
the conquered districts in the possession of the Porte. 
Such an undertaking would be arduous and costly, 
and would involve great calamities, and it would not 
be effective for the object which Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment have in view, unless subsequently strengthened 
by precautions which can be taken almost as effectually 
without incurring the miseries of a preliminary war. 
The only provision which can furnish a substantial 
security for the stability of Ottoman rule in Asiatic 
Turkey, and which would be as essential after the re- 
conquest of the Russian annexations as it is now, is an 
engagement on the part of a Power strong enough to 
fulfil it, that any further encroachments by Russia 



APPENDIX 195 

upon Turkish territory in Asia will be prevented by 
force of arms. Such an undertaking, if given fully 
and unreservedly, will prevent the occurrence of the 
contingency which would bring it into operation, and 
will, at the same time, give to the populations of the 
Asiatic provinces the requisite confidence that Turkish 
rule in Asia is not destined to a speedy fall. 

There are, however, two conditions which it would 
be necessary for the Porte to subscribe before England 
could give such assurance. 

Her Majesty's Government intimated to the Porte, 
on the occasion of the Conference at Constantinople, 
that they were not prepared to sanction misgovernment 
and oppression, and it will be requisite, before they can 
enter into any agreement for the defence of the Asiatic 
territories of the Porte in certain eventualities, that 
they should be formally assured of the intention of the 
Porte to introduce the necessary reforms into the govern- 
ment of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte 
in these regions. It is not desirable to require more 
than an engagement in general terms ; for the specific 
measures to be taken could only be defined after a more 
careful inquiry and deliberation than could be secured 
at the present juncture. 

It is not impossible that a careful selection and a 
faithful support of the individual ofiicers to whom 
power is to" be entrusted in those countries would be a 
more important element in the improvement of the 
condition of the people than even legislative changes; 
but the assurances required to give England a right to 
insist on satisfactory arrangements for these purposes 
will be an indispensable part of any agreement to 
which Her Majesty's Government could consent. It 
will further be necessary, in order to enable Her 
Majesty's Government efficiently to execute the engage- 



196 APPENDIX 

ments now proposed, that they should occupy a posi- 
tion near the coast of Asia Minor and Syria. The 
proximity of British officers, and, if necessary, British 
troops, will be the best security that all the objects of 
this agreement shall be attained. The Island of Cyprus 
appears to them to be in all respects the most available 
for this object. Her Majesty's Government do not wish 
to ask the Sultan to alienate territory from his sove- 
reignty or to diminish the receipts which now pass 
into his Treasury. They will, therefore, propose that, 
while the administration and occupation of the island 
shall be assigned to Her Majesty, the territory shall still 
continue to be part of the Ottoman Empire, and that the 
excess of the revenue over the expenditure, whatever 
it at present may be, shall be paid over annually by 
the British Government to the Treasury of the Sultan. 

Inasmuch as the whole of this proposal is due to 
the annexations which Russia has made in Asiatic 
Turkey, and the consequences which it is apprehended 
will flow therefrom, it must be fully understood that, 
if the cause of the danger should cease, the precaution- 
ary agreement will cease at the same time. If the 
Government of Russia should at any time surrender 
to the Porte the territory it has acquired in Asia by 
the recent war, the stipulations in the proposed agree- 
ments will cease to operate, and the island will be 
immediately evacuated. 

I request, therefore, your Excellency to propose to 
the Porte to agree to a Convention to the following 
effect, and I have to convey to you full authority to 
conclude the same on behalf of the Queen and of Her 
Majesty's Government — 

" If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be 
retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made at 



APPENDIX 197 

any future time by Russia to take possession of any 
further portion of the Asiatic territories of the Sultan, 
as fixed by the definitive Treaty of Peace, England 
engages to join the Sultan in defending them by force 
of arms. In return, the Sultan promises to England 
to introduce necessary reforms (to be agreed upon 
later between the two Powers) into the government of 
the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these 
territories; and, in order to enable England to make 
necessary provision for executing her engagement the 
Sultan further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus 
to be occupied and administered by England." 

I am, etc., 

(Signed) Salisbury. 

No. 2 is the Convention itself, as follows — 

Article I 

If Batoum, Ardahan, Kars, or any of them shall be 
retained by Russia, and if any attempt shall be made 
at any future time by Russia to take possession of any 
further territories of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan 
in Asia, as fixed by the definitive Treaty of Peace, 
England engages to join His Imperial Majesty the 
Sultan in defending them by force of arms. 

In return, His Imperial Majesty the Sultan promises 
to England to introduce necessary reforms, to be agreed 
upon later by the two Powers, into the government 
and for the protection of the Christian and other sub- 
jects of the Porte in these territories ; and in order to 
enable England to make necessary provision for exe- 
cuting her engagement His Imperial Majesty the Sultan 
further consents to assign the Island of Cyprus to be 
occupied and administered by England. 



198 APPENDIX 

Article II 

The present Convention shall be ratified, and the 
ratifications thereof shall be exchanged, within the 
space of one month, or sooner if possible. 

In Witness whereof the respective Plenipotentiaries 
have signed the same, and have affixed thereto thqj 
seal of their arms. 

Done at Constantinople, the fourth day of June, in 
the year One thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight. 

(L.S.) A. H. Layard. 
(L.S.) Safvet. 

No. 3 is the Annex to the above Convention, con- 
sisting of Six Articles, signed at Constantinople on 
July 1, 1878, by A. H. Layard and Safvet respectively. 
The first five Articles deal -with the manner in which the 
Island of Cyprus would be governed, whilst under 
British occupation. The final Article, viz. Article VI, 
is as follows — 

" That if Russia restores to Turkey Kars and the 
other Conquests made by her in Armenia during the 
last war, the Island of Cyprus will be evacuated by 
England; and the Convention of June 4, 1878, will 
be at an end." 



NOTE 

(p. 29.) 

" The Turanian movement is not the spasmodic 
effort of a few enthusiasts. It represents a carefully 
matured plan most elaborately studied in its philo- 



APPENDIX 199 

sophical and practical aspects, and carried out on a 

vast and ambitious scale. The spirit of its teaching 

has been made to permeate all classes of the purely 

Turkish population, including women; while, in the 

J army, it has been taught in the shape of a patriotic 

'creed, and the force of military discipline has been 

laid at the service of its promoters. The movement, 

therefore, no longer expresses the creed of a limited 

number of nationalist fanatics, represented by the 

Central Committee of Union and Progress, or the 

extremist section of it, but of practically the whole 

of the Turkish people, backed by the formidable power 

iof the army. Thus, the view that would represent 

jthe Turkish people as unwitting or unwilling tools 

in the hands of the Unionist Government can no longer 

ibe accepted. The Turkish race as a whole, with but 

few exceptions, stands convicted of indulging in a 

wanton political dream, for the realization of which 

it seized the opportunity of the world-war to commit 

most atrocious crimes. It is true that the initial 

i responsibility Hes with the C.U.P., but the whole of 

the Turkish nation has since shared the responsibility 

by its ready response. This is borne out by the easy 

success attained by the Unionist Government in 

modifying — with hardly a dissentient voice — the system 

of State education, embracing even the elementary 

schools, and in misappropriating the Wakfs funds. 

" Military officers of the higher grades were instructed 
to pay periodical visits to the barracks and there 
deliver lectures of a mixed religious and racial character, 
prepared by the Government. Were not the Turkish 
heart a ready soil, such sowings would not have yielded 
such an early and abundant harvest. In spite of 
successive admixtures of blood, the Turks have retained 
the original instincts of the wild men of the Steppes, 



200 APPENDIX 

and a creed aiming at conquest and domination through 
destruction and bloodshed found eager response in 
their souls. Islam, sympathetic as it is, despite its 
militant character, was sacrificed for the reaUzation 
of this widest of human dreams. There was not enough 
of ' iron and blood ' in its teaching. The Turanian 
creed, framed on the Prussian pattern of militarism, 
appealed a thousand times more to the Turks' savage 
nature ; and the proof is that, without any compulsion 
being employed, it quickly supplanted the reUgious 
heritage of centuries. The troops took up readily 
the heroic Turanian songs in place of the usual prayers 
which had, until lately, been compulsory, but are so 
no more . The simplest of Anatolians willingly accepted 
the idea that the prophet of later days is Enver 1 The 
fundamental rules of Islam became, for them, the 
Testimony (for the unity of God), Reason, Character, 
and the Collection of contributions for the Government 
and the War under the Turkish banner." 

(From an article entitled "Turanian and Moslem" in TA^ 
Near East, April 20, 1917.) 




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